The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

22

The marriage limped on full of spats. Guy came down at midday on Good Friday looking wretched and carrying a box of glasses. ‘To replace the ones you threw at me,’ he said heavily, then, priding himself on his frugality: ‘From the Reject Shop.’

‘Why don’t you put me in the window,’ snarled Georgie.

Unable to suppress a craving for information that Guy was plainly not going to volunteer, Georgie asked if he’d seen Julia.

‘We spoke briefly on the telephone,’ said Guy, who had his back to her at the drinks table. ‘I’ve talked to Harry, and because we’ve sent out the invites and done a lot of press lobbying and advertising, we’ve decided to go ahead with her exhibition.’

‘Did Julia mention me?’ asked Georgie.

‘We didn’t discuss you,’ said Guy crushingly, pouring half an inch of whisky into one of his new glasses. ‘Harry will deal with Julia from now on. But I shall obviously have to attend the private view.’

‘Thought you’d viewed her enough in private.’

‘Don’t be petty. Julia wants us to be friends, as much as we can be. She’d like you to be there as well.’

If he says ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’, I shall scream, thought Georgie.

‘To err—’ began Guy.

‘I’m not gracing her private view,’ said Georgie flatly, ‘just because she needs a celeb to pull in the Press.’

‘That is the most horrible remark I’ve ever heard,’ said Guy. ‘It’s my gallery and I make fifty per cent out of every sale. I would have thought you would have wanted to attract the Press.’

And Georgie had promptly burst into tears and run out of the house.

As she ran down the path Guy had cut out of the wood for her, she heard the cuckoo for the first time. The angelic third floating through the trees.

‘Unpleasing to a married ear, cuckoo, cuckoo,’ sobbed Georgie.

Ahead lay Valhalla. She was tempted to dump on poor Kitty Rannaldini, who had been endlessly cuckolded and survived — just. But as Rannaldini might be there, who would be amused rather than sympathetic, she stumbled on. There had never been anything like the pain.

Wandering aimlessly she arrived home to find the BMW gone. The red sun was disappearing over the horizon, a cricket-ball hit for six — like Guy over Ju Ju. Sunsets were only bearable because the sun would rise again tomorrow. If Guy never came back, she’d die. Leaping into her ancient Golf she set out to look for him. She didn’t have to go as far as Eldercombe. There was the BMW crookedly parked in the churchyard, which in the twilight was still lit by daffodils. The church was decked for Easter. Breathing in the smell of narcissi and furniture polish, Georgie saw Guy slumped over the front pew, head bowed on clasped hands. When she touched his shoulder, his face was streaming with tears.

‘Oh, Panda,’ he sobbed, ‘I’ve made such a cock-up of my life, but I love you so much. Please don’t leave me.’

Georgie pulled his head against her belly.

‘It’s OK I love you, too. I nearly died when I saw the car gone. I thought you’d gone to her.’

‘Never, never, never.’

Stumbling out of the church, they stopped to kiss each other in the doorway, and were seen by a photographer who worked for the Rutminster News on his way home from football. On Monday morning The Scorpion printed a picture of the happiest couple in England.

The truce was fleeting. In the weeks that followed Guy talked of commuting, but he never did. The weight fell off Georgie, who tried to glam herself up when he came home, but however quick she was in the bath, he was asleep by the time she came to bed.

Georgie was distraught. She couldn’t stop crying, and, unable to believe Guy’s protestations that he wasn’t seeing Julia any more, she felt as venomous and rejected as ragwort in a field of cows. Not only had she lost her hero and her best friend, but her image of herself as a nice person, which Guy’s great imagined love had given her.

The rows were terrible, with Georgie boozing and ranting into the night, then apologizing in panic in case she’d gone too far and Guy really would leave her.

The wastage was awful, too: milk going sour because it wasn’t taken in; Dinsdale getting the casserole Mother Courage had made for the weekend, which no-one had touched; fuzzy potatoes on their third day in a saucepan of water; black volcanic shapes discovered in the Aga days later; and all the vegetables leaking in the rack. Even Dinsdale finally went off his food. The Press were also sniffing around. So many marriages were breaking up, they wanted to know the secret of a happy one.

‘Ignorance,’ Georgie told The Scorpion in an unguarded moment.

On automatic pilot, she managed to go up to London, talk about Rock Star on Aspel, open a supermarket and have a long session with the whizz-kid producer who was revamping some of her old songs for the new Catchitune album. ‘Rock Star’ still topped the charts, but every time she heard this celebration of Guy’s dependability on the radio she felt sick.

She also had to live through the nightmare of Julia’s exhibition. She didn’t go to the private view, Guy didn’t want any more glasses smashed. But there was a large piece in You magazine. Julia, from the photographs, had cut her hair, and now had a head of russet curls rather like the Bubbles painting.

‘There is a wistful air about lovely Julia Armstrong,’ ran the copy. ‘Slim as a boy…’

More like the first Peregrine than ever, thought Georgie savagely. But it made her realize how awful it must be for Julia reading about her and Guy all the time.

Poor Guy wasn’t having much fun either. Julia’s paintings had sold well, but the art market had taken a dive and he’d also bought a couple of minor French Impressionists for a property developer, who’d suddenly called in the receiver. Guy was left with the bill.

But he could have put up with business being so awful, and Georgie’s tantrums, and the nightmare of his marriage, if he’d still had Julia to lighten his darkness. He missed her terribly. It broke his heart when she rang up and tearfully pleaded with him to see her.

Nor were his men friends any help. Larry, in his now-married bliss in Jamaica, showed no interest in buying Guy’s paintings, but insisted on being incredibly sanctimonious.

‘If I can give up Nikki, why can’t you give up Julia?’

‘She’s refusing to give me up.’

‘Get an answering machine. That’ll stop the dropped telephone calls.’

‘I’ve got an answering-back machine at home,’ said Guy. ‘It’s called Georgie.’

Rannaldini was vastly amused by the whole thing.

‘Find another mistress, dear boy. There are plenty more fishwives in the sea.’

Guy was fed up. How could he find anyone else? He was desperately strapped for cash. There were all those pretty separated women who made warm eyes at him at gallery parties and in church on Sunday, but he could hardly afford to buy them a drink.

In the old days both Julia and Georgie had adored him, told him he was marvellous and asked his opinion on absolutely everything — two loves had he of comfort and comfort. Now they were both displaying all the venom of tabloid newspapers denied an exclusive. Hell certainly knew no fury like two women scorned. Guy felt like a worm done over by a blackbird.