‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘Hang on — there is a reason.’
Driving on up the hill Ferdie pulled into a gap. Through the trees across the valley half a mile to the right of Valhalla they could see a Georgian house, smaller than Fleetley, but exquisitely proportioned, with soaring stone angels on each corner of the roof.
‘That house, Angel’s Reach, was totally unmodernized with a fantastic wild garden,’ said Ferdie. ‘It’s been bought by Georgie Maguire and her husband, Guy Seymour, who are spending an absolute fortune on it.’
Lysander opened a bloodshot eye. ‘Even I’ve heard of her. Wasn’t she a pop singer in the sixties? Mum had all her records.’
‘That’s right. Now she writes songs as well.’
‘I’ve always thought she was seriously attractive,’ said Lysander.
‘Georgie and Guy paid a million five.’ Ferdie edged the car on until they could see a long lake glinting gold in the falling sun below the house.
‘My guess is they can’t afford it, but they’re gambling on her new album, which is produced by Larry Lockton and Catchitune, being a massive hit.’
‘Aren’t Georgie and Guy supposed to be the happiest couple in show business?’ sighed Lysander enviously.
‘Which probably means they’re both screwing around,’ said Ferdie cynically.
Lysander shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It’s quite awful. What’s the point of getting married if you spend your time bonking other people?’
‘This monstrous regiment of womanizers,’ said Ferdie with a shrug. ‘Paradise husbands ring up from London on Thursdays to remind the housekeepers to get their wives out of the freezer so they’ll be unfrosted by the time the master returns on Friday night.’
‘Why the hell do the wives put up with it?’ asked Lysander with a shudder. ‘At least Dad didn’t bonk other women.’
‘When your husband’s as rich as Croesus, you get used to a certain lifestyle and you can’t bear to give it up.’
‘I’ve got Croesus in my face,’ said Lysander, peering gloomily in the driving mirror. ‘Let’s go home, Ferd, I want to see Dolly and explain about The Scorpion before she goes into orbit. This place is seriously depressing.’
‘It is,’ said Ferdie, swinging the car round, ‘particularly for someone like Marigold Lockton. She loves that shit Larry to distraction, and that’s where you come in. You’re going to be her toy boy.’
‘How old is she?’
‘About thirty-eight.’
‘I can’t bonk an old wrinkly like that,’ said Lysander in outrage.
‘You’re not going to bonk her, just hang about and rattle her husband, and make him so jealous he’ll come roaring back. It worked with Boris Levitsky and Elmer Winterton. This time you’re going to get paid.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Lysander. ‘I can’t get a husband back if the marriage is dead. You can’t reheat baked potatoes.’
‘First you’ve got to look at the wife,’ said Ferdie. ‘If she’s gone to seed, you unseed her, and make her look like a mistress. Put back the gleam in her eye, let her taunt her husband with a scented body that’s quivering with lust for someone else.’ Ferdie rubbed the windscreen which was steaming up. ‘Get the weight off, get her some decent clothes (I bet there’s a raver lurking beneath Marigold’s polyester V-necks). Above all, make her stop nagging and act detached. No more flying leaps to catch the telephone on the first ring.’
‘You’ve really studied this.’ Lysander looked at Ferdie with new respect as they drew up outside the big electric gates of Paradise Grange.
‘We are about to repackage and remarket a product,’ said Ferdie. ‘Let’s go see Marigold.’
8
Up a long drive through splendid parkland dotted with noble trees, Paradise Grange reared up, a sprawling bulk of grey stone topped by turrets and battlements. On the perfect lawns still-frozen patches merged with great sheets of snowdrops and on the roof a flag flying the famous yellow-and-purple Catchitune colours was fretted by the bitter wind. Although it was still early afternoon, carriage lamps blazed on either side of the great oak front door. There was no answer when Ferdie rang the bell which played the Hallelujah Chorus. But as he pushed open the door he bumped into Marigold Lockton, deliriously excited that he might be a returning Larry and followed by an overweight, furiously barking, spaniel.
There’s no way I’m going to get Larry Lockton back for that, thought Lysander. Marigold looked absolutely dreadful, rather like a Beryl Cook lady masquerading as Mrs Thatcher. She was twenty pounds overweight, with red eyes and red veins criss-crossing her unhealthily white cheeks. An Alice band on her mousy permed hair emphasized a corrugated forehead. A V-necked polyester dress in overcooked-sprouts-green showed off a neck and arms as opaque and pudgy as the white chocolates with which she constantly stuffed herself. She had clearly also been stuck into the vodka for several hours.
Her first carefully elocuted words to Ferdie were that he could forget about the house he was finding her in Tregunter Road.
‘Even if Larry’s plannin’ to put Paradise Grange on the market, Ay’m not movin’. The kiddies love their ’ome; whay should they lose it and whay should Ay after all the work Ay’ve put into redecoratin’ it?’ She pointed to the oak panelling in the hall which had been painted a rather startling flamingo pink.
‘Larry wanted the kiddies brought up in the country.’ Her voice rattled like a sliver of bone in the Hoover as she led them into a vast drawing room. ‘So he stuck me down ’ere, mayles away from the shops. Now he’s packed them off to boardin’ school to get a posh accent and some smart friends, and he’s given may daily help and Mr and Mrs Brimscombe, our couple what live at the bottom of the drayve, a month’s notice to force me out.
‘Poor Mr B’s tended this garden for nearly forty years. Look at the poor old chap.’ Marigold pointed out of the window at an ancient gardener morosely clipping a yew hedge. ‘Ay can’t lay him off, it’d break his ’eart. Even more than mine’s broke.’
‘Marigold,’ interrupted Ferdie, ‘this is Lysander Hawkley.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Marigold unenthusiastically, then pulling herself together, ‘I suppose you want a noggin.’
‘Please,’ said Ferdie, then, seeing Lysander’s appalled face, whispered, ‘Hang about, I promise you it’s worth it.’
‘She’s gross,’ hissed Lysander. ‘I’d need serious beer goggles to get within a hundred yards.’
‘Lovely view,’ enthused Ferdie loudly, squeezing between a large harp and a wind-up gramophone to look out of the huge window stretching the length of the room. ‘You can see Valhalla and Angel’s Reach from here, and Rachel’s cottage behind those Wellingtonias.’
‘I don’t care,’ grumbled Lysander, ‘I want to go home.’
Despite several bright Persian rugs tossed over a pink wall-to-wall carpet, a matching pink dog basket, a superabundance of silk cushions on their points like a Kirov line-up and enough tartan chairs and sofas to do the Highland fling, the room was as cosy as the furniture department of an Oxford Street store. There were too many dark cumbersome pieces, too many chandeliers, too much gilt on the mirrors and too few logs bravely burning in the vast stone cave of a fireplace.