‘Oh, you bastard!’ Flora arched her back, went rigid and came.
‘That was nice?’ crooned Rannaldini, delightedly gathering her against his chest and stroking her hair.
‘Bliss but utterly bent.’
‘Is only the beginning. Tomorrow you can be little nun who has been caught in some wickedness.’
‘And you’ll be the Abbot of Valhalla ordering me to be flogged. Not bloody likely.’
Desperate to regain the upper hand, Flora dropped to her knees, unzipping his fly, lowering the blue silk boxer shorts and burying her face in the scented powdered hair flattened by the tight trousers, as the thick powerful cock flew up like a jack in the box.
‘Oh, wow,’ sighed Flora.
But, feeling her tongue, Rannaldini pulled away.
‘I weesh to come inside you.’
‘Pity, I wanted to have my cock and eat it.’
For a second she thought he was going to hit her.
‘Stop taking the pees.’
Lifting her back on to the stone bench he roughly parted her labia and shoved his cock deep inside her.
‘Aaaaaaah, lovely,’ cried Flora, starting to move.
She was used to over-excited schoolboys who came in an instant. Rannaldini now totally in control, could have been a metronone for The Rite of Spring. His rhythm was so exact and so relentless.
‘Keep your eyes open,’ he ordered, his face satanical above hers, ‘I want to see you come. Are you bored now?’
‘Not as much as I was. Twelve bored more likely.’ Ah, those deep slow thrusts, Flora was battling not to abdicate herself completely. ‘For a pervert you’re seriously good at straight fucking. Although this bench is even harder than you — oh my God, on second thoughts perhaps it isn’t… Oh, Rannaldini, oh, Rannaldini.’
At the end of a week’s suspension Flora was allowed back for the Leaver’s Ball, because Wolfie Rannaldini, who’d won every cup and prize going, interceded with Sabine Bottomley.
Two days before the ball Flora, who was supposed to be practising ‘Who is Sylvia?’ with Rannaldini in his tower, was actually perched on his huge treble bed rubbing baby oil into him while he finished the crossword.
‘Ah that’s good. Deeper, deeper. You learn fast.’ Later he combed back the hair between her legs.
‘You are very charming, like a rose called Felicia. I cannot wait to shave you.’
‘Do you shave all your women?’
‘Usually. Cecilia ’ave a brush like Bernard Shaw’s beard so I ’ad to.’
‘You are decadent. You should publish a coffee table book of all your ladies and call it Clitoris Allsorts. Anyway you can’t shave me until after the Leavers’ Ball. Think of the raised eyebrows if we all go skinny dipping.’
‘You are not going to Leavers’ Ball.’
‘I must. I feel so dreadful about Wolfie. I promised I’d go with him two months ago. I’m not letting him down in front of all his friends. I’m off backpacking soon, so he and I will just peter out without his knowing about you.’
‘Eef you go to that ball, do not come back to me.’
It was her first experience of Rannaldini’s intransigence. She knew she mustn’t give in. She was horrified how difficult she found it.
Having persuaded Georgie to buy a slinky black dress covered in sequins for The Clive Anderson Show so she could borrow it for the ball, Flora discovered it was too tight on the hips. Resorting to half a packet of Ex-Lax she spent the day of the ball on the 100 groaning that she was dying.
That makes two of us, thought Georgie.
Deathly pale, buckling at the knees, Flora managed to gird her ransacked loins to get ready. At least the dress fitted perfectly. Georgie was just fastening her own jade pendant round Flora’s neck when Flora asked her point blank if she’d ever been unfaithful to Guy.
‘No, of course not.’
As Georgie crossed her fingers the jade pendant slithered between Flora’s breasts.
‘And has Daddy ever been unfaithful to you?’
This time, as she crossed her fingers, Georgie held on to the pendant with her thumb.
‘Of course not.’
‘How very boring,’ said Flora. ‘Marriage must be like a prison.’
Next moment her mother had burst into tears, but denied there was anything the matter, just saying work was going badly.
As Wolfie was playing cricket against the fathers and going to be pushed for time, Guy — the ever-willing chauffeur — dropped Flora off at Valhalla where the roses were scattering pale petals all over the lawns.
Rannaldini, who’d just flown in from a wonderfully successful performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth, was delighted to see Flora looking so wan. But she had the wonderful skin of youth where sleepless nights only put darker blue shadows under the eyes and made her look more appealing. He had never wanted anyone more, but icily he ignored her.
Before she left with Wolfie and Natasha, they paraded before the grown-ups in their finery.
Oh, I’d love to be beautiful and thin and go to a ball, thought Kitty longingly.
Wolfie asked his father to tie his tie. He had made another century this afternoon and looked bullish, very brown and handsome.
‘None of our generation can tie bow-ties,’ said Natasha.
‘Family ties are more important,’ said Flora pointedly.
For a second, as his father had to stand on tiptoe to see over his shoulder into the mirror and flick and slot the yellow Paisley tie in and out, Wolfie had a spookie feeling Rannaldini wanted to throttle him.
‘You all look be-yootiful,’ called out Kitty as they drove off.
As Kitty sorted through the mountains of washing from her stepchildren’s trunks the following afternoon she felt really depressed — not only had she got the curse, which meant yet again she wasn’t pregnant, but also because she’d just switched on Wimbledon and seen Hermione and Rannaldini sitting together on Centre Court.
She’d just removed the clothes which Natasha, who was flying to New York the next day, might need, when Wolfie tottered in still wearing his dinner-jacket. At first she thought he was drunk, then, as he collapsed at the kitchen table, she realized he was crying.
‘Christ, I hate my father.’
Kitty went cold. Mindlessly she filled the kettle.
‘Flora was impossible all evening,’ said Wolfie, furiously wiping his desperately bloodshot eyes. ‘Then she vanished and came back all lit up. I thought she was on something. She refused to dance, the sides of the marquee were up because it was so hot, she kept looking up at the stars. Then she gives this shriek of excitement and runs across the pitch leaving her bag, her shoes and her green jacket behind as my father’s helicopter lands on the pitch.’
Wolfie couldn’t go on. The wind from Rannaldini’s blades had blown Flora’s skirt over her head, and his last memory had been of her black legs and suspenders and her red bikini pants.
‘She was so crazy about Boris,’ he said despairingly, ‘and Marcus Campbell-Black, but I thought I’d seen off the competition. But how can I compete when my father comes out of the sky like Close Encounters?’
Wolfie was a kind boy but so deranged with grief he’d forgotten who he was talking to.
‘My mother’s still in love with him and they’ve been divorced for years,’ he went on bitterly. ‘When we were in Salzburg Papa swanned up and put his hand on her shoulders: “You’re looking lovely, Gisela,” and Mum started shaking and shaking. He can have anyone. Why does he have to take Flora as well?’
Suddenly Wolfie realized the cup Kitty was putting down in front of him was spilling tea all over the table.