‘Better pay us in kind after Friday night,’ said Georgie.
Remembering it was dustbin day, and Mother Courage wasn’t due for half an hour, Georgie started to empty the waste-paper baskets. In the basket in Guy’s study she found a pink envelope, torn up into pieces smaller than confetti. Was it practising for this that one did so many jigsaws as a child? thought Georgie. Having laboriously pieced the envelope together, she saw it was addressed to: GUY SEYMOUR, private, at the gallery.
‘I must not let it put me off my work,’ she told herself sternly. ‘Women have always had crushes on Guy. Look at the way Kitty Rannaldini goes scarlet every time he speaks to her.’
All the same, she jumped as though she’d been caught snooping when the telephone rang. It was London Weekend asking how she was getting on with Ant and Cleo and whether there was anything they could see.
‘It’s going really well, but it’s still in draft form,’ Georgie told them airily, but starting to shake.
After they’d rung off, she decided to look for Act One. Perhaps Guy had picked it up. His study was so tidy, she was frightened of disrupting anything. Opening a desk drawer, searching for a sheaf of manuscript paper, she stumbled on the most charming nude drawing of a girl in a primrose-yellow bath cap with, except for the full breasts, a long slim, almost childish, body. It was a second before Georgie realized it was Julia. The drawing was unsigned, but it didn’t have the narrow-eyed, scowling intense look of a self-portrait.
It was perfectly normal for Guy to buy drawings of artists he exhibited; but Georgie nevertheless felt her happiness seep away like water out of a crooked plughole.
There was the bloody telephone. How was she getting on in the country, asked the girl from the Daily Mail. Was she meeting lots of interesting people?
‘I don’t meet people down here, I meet fucking deadlines,’ snarled Georgie, then had to apologize to the reporter, who knew what hell deadlines were, and who congratulated her on Guy being voted Hubby of the Year, and asked if she could do a telephone interview with her about Guy.
Feeling guilty that she’d been harbouring jealous thoughts about pink envelopes and nudes, Georgie was even more glowing about her husband than usual.
The rest of the week was punctuated by thank-you letters for the dinner party praising Guy’s cooking. Not to be outdone, Georgie wasted a whole workday making a fish pie for Guy’s return on Friday night. Putting the first bluebells in his study and his dressing room, she welcomed him with clean hair and a rust angora jersey which he loved because it made her feel all soft and cuddly. As he came out on to the terrace after unpacking, he handed her the Evening Standard.
‘They’ve given Julia’s exhibition a terrific advance plug, I brought it down to show you. God, it’s beautiful here.’
A week of sun had brought out the wild cherries and palest gold criss-cross leaves like kisses on the willows.
‘From you have I been absent in the spring,’ murmured Guy, sliding his hands up under the rust angora. ‘Will that deliciously smelling fish pie keep for half an hour?’
Next day was just as beautiful, and Georgie decided to walk down to Paradise with Dinsdale, trying out the new path that had been hacked out through the wood. On either side, trees soared tall and gangling from being planted too close. Many of them were smothered to the top in ivy. Georgie noticed how many of the trunks had been daubed with silver paint, which meant they would soon be cut down to make more room for the others. Georgie felt really sad. Some of the condemned were really splendid trees, happily putting out palest green leaves, unaware of their fate. Would that make a theme for a song? She was about to scribble the idea on the back of her shopping list when she realized she’d left it behind, and calling to Dinsdale, who was baying in the woods after rabbits, ran back home.
Climbing back in through the low kitchen window, she found Guy on the telephone.
‘All alone in a huge house,’ he was sighing, ‘God, if only you were here.’ Then, seeing Georgie, without missing a beat, he said, ‘I’m sorry, you must have got the wrong number. This is 284 not 285. OK, no problem,’ and hanging up, ‘Hallo, Panda, what did you forget?’
Georgie collapsed astride the window because her trembling legs wouldn’t hold her up.
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘Wrong number.’
‘But I heard you saying you were alone in a huge house, and if only whoever it was, was here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Guy’s mouth gave a little pop of incredulity as he pronounced the ‘B’ of beg. His eyes were as innocent as a kitten’s.
‘Guy, I heard you.’
‘Are you out of your mind? If I get a wrong number, you accuse me of having other women. You’re spending too much time on your own. Ask Kitty over to supper next week, or get some pills from the local doctor. Benson he’s called. Everyone swears by him.’
Such was his assurance that Georgie felt she was the one in the wrong. She ought to have left well alone, but she was badly frightened.
‘Who were you spending thirty minutes talking to on the telephone within seconds of leaving the house on Monday then?’
‘Harry,’ replied Guy calmly. ‘I was bringing him up to date about selling all those Armstrongs, and talking about a couple of British Impressionists Rannaldini’s after. He is my partner and we had a lot to catch up on. I had a week off moving you, and a Friday off to organize your dinner party.’
‘You asked Julia and Ben. No, stay outside, darling, I’ll be with you in a sec,’ Georgie added as Dinsdale’s lugubrious face appeared at the window.
‘And who sent that pink envelope marked “Private” which you tore up and threw in your waste-paper basket?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ snapped Guy, sliding a squeezed-out dishcloth along the runnels of the sink. ‘Geraldine and the girls in the gallery probably sent it as a joke.’ He extracted a piece of bacon rind and fish skin, both of which she supposed she should have removed from last night’s fish pie, from the plughole.
‘And what about the charming nude of Julia?’ she hissed.
‘That does it,’ said Guy, losing his temper. ‘You said you liked Julia, so I kept back that little nude for you for Easter. It’ll be worth a lot one day, and I know how you like women,’ he added nastily.
Georgie flushed. In her wild sixties days, she and Tancredi had had the odd threesome with other girls.
‘And don’t you get turned on hearing about it?’ she said furiously.
The row escalated, until Georgie burst into tears and said she was sorry. Then Guy apologized. He hadn’t meant to be ratty, but he was worried about their overdraft.
‘We must pull in our horns.’
Cuckolds have horns, thought Georgie as she hugged him in passionate relief.
She was particularly glad the row was made up because Flora was coming home on Sunday for her birthday before going back to Bagley Hall for the summer term in the evening. Having forgotten to get the Hockney framed, Guy gave her a cheque instead. Georgie gave her a sand-coloured shorts suit from Jigsaw which she’d wanted. Dinsdale, who’d been decked out in a big blue bow for the occasion, gave her a basket from the Body Shop.
‘I don’t want to go back,’ grumbled Flora, chucking all the clothes, which were marginally more crumpled after Mother Courage had ironed them, into her trunk, and putting two hundred Marlboros on the top.
‘Ought you to take these?’ asked Georgie. ‘You’ll ruin your voice. Do try and do some work, darling, and don’t get caught drinking. You know how it upsets Daddy.’