Jilly Cooper - The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

‘Thanks for everything.’ Leaning back through the forests of scented taffetas and silks for a last kiss, Lysander raced down the stairs and found the painting. The full moon was honey gold not grapefruit pink this time. And there was the little door.

His hands were trembling so badly it took three goes to slot in the swipe card. Now, what was the number? His brain froze. Martha’s age? He punched up a three then a nought, but what was Elmer’s? About a hundred. The frenzied growling grew closer; any second they’d realize he’d escaped this way. Elmer? Elmer? Would the thirty be still working or would it run out like a half-rung telephone number? That was it. He punched a four and a nine. Nothing happened. Perhaps he’d put the card in back to front or upside down.

‘Oh please God,’ he moaned, ‘I’m sorry I screwed Martha, but you’d have done the same, God, she was so beautiful.’ As he hurled himself against the door it caved in and he was out in the dripping garden, darker now because the moon had vanished behind a big black cloud.

The smell of orange blossom was suffocating. Venus blazed above the ficus rampart. As Lysander bolted, white and leggy as a unicorn, across the perfect lawn he triggered off the underground sensors. Suddenly 1000-watt lamps lit up the garden brighter than day and closed-circuit television cameras swung round to trap him on a dozen monitors in the house and at the gate. Elmer’s guards had simply to pick him off. Hearing the blood-curdling barking as the pack of dogs was unleashed, Lysander ducked behind a traveller’s palm to avoid a hail of bullets.

The ficus hedge topped by razor wire was twenty yards away. Streaming as he was with rain and sweat, it would electrocute him instantly. Ahead loomed a vast individual ficus tree, Falstaffian in girth and so old that its lower branches rested their elbows on the ground. Scuttling up the nearest branch like a squirrel, Lysander managed to wriggle round the trunk just as the dogs began leaping for his feet with gnashing teeth. Swinging out on to another branch, he dropped into the street.

Heart hammering, legs trembling and giving way, sobbing with terror, Lysander collapsed against the huge hedge wondering what the hell to do next. The practical answer was to put as much distance between himself and Elmer as possible, but, bollock-naked with no identification except bruises, he’d probably get arrested and slapped into a loony bin and get his brains sawn open like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest .

The streets were deserted, but the sky was lightening. Loping eastwards he was overtaken by yet another open stretch and, as he cringed into the nearest hedge, feeling the clipped twigs scraping his bare back, the driver stopped and reversed.

A blonde in a black strapless dress with huge sapphires hanging from her ears and circling her neck and wrists, she was a good deal older than Martha but almost as stunning.

‘What happened to you?’ she asked, looking him up and down in amusement.

‘The husband came home.’

‘Well, at least you’re not armed. You’d better get in.’

Lysander shot into the car.

Seeing the Wall Street Journal lying on the back seat, Lysander covered himself with the front page like a car rug.

‘Phew — it’s really kind of you.’

‘I figured I heard shots, or was that Elmer Winterton cracking his knee joints?’

‘He tried to kill me,’ said Lysander, perking up.

‘The guy’s an animal.’

‘No animal is that nasty. Christ!’ Glancing down at the Wall Street Journal Lysander saw Elmer’s photograph glaring up at him. ‘He’s following me. I could tear him out, then my cock would stick through.’

‘Feel free,’ said the blonde.

‘Martha said he was a clinical Nazi.’

‘I thought he was Dutch.’

‘Good thing that tree I shinned up didn’t have Dutch Elmer disease or the branch would have given way.’ Having started giggling, Lysander found he couldn’t stop. ‘I’m sorry. It’s nervous hysteria. Have you got a cigarette?’

‘Sure, in my purse. The name’s Sherry by the way, Sherry Macarthy.’

Protected back and front by more pages of the Wall Street Journal , Lysander slid into Sherry’s house which was bigger and more lushly decorated than Elmer’s with a back garden falling straight into the ocean.

‘I guess you’d like some breakfast and a pair of my husband’s shorts?’

‘You got a husband?’ Lysander shot into reverse.

‘He’s in San Francisco,’ said Sherry soothingly.

Lysander crept back. ‘Could I possibly have a shower? After all that sex and fear I must stink like a polecat.’

Upstairs he admired another vast four-poster, this time swathed in primrose-yellow silk and topped at its four corners by gilded cherubs, none of whom was protected by the Wall Street Journal .

‘Amazing room.’

‘It’s Franco’s, my husband’s,’ said Sherry, who was turning on the gold taps of a vast marble bath next door. ‘Help yourself.’

The doors of a fitted cupboard which took up a whole wall, and which had been lavishly handpainted with pale yellow and coral-pink roses, slid back to reveal hundreds of shirts. There were more scent bottles massed on the bathroom shelves than a duty-free shop. Franco also must have the snakiest of hips. Lysander had the greatest difficulty finding a pair of shorts he could zip up.

‘God, this is great! I haven’t eaten for forty-eight hours.’

Having downed three glasses of orange juice, Lysander was tucking into a huge plate of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and hashbrowns, while Sherry filled yellow-and-white cups with very black coffee.

They were sitting beside a beautiful blue pool guarded by four big blue china dragons. White geraniums spilled over the faded terracotta pots and little waves gambolled idly on the pale sand below them. Above, the palm trees rattled in their diffident fashion.

Sherry had also showered and had swapped her black taffeta and her sapphires for a flamingo-pink sarong which left bare her almost too brown shoulders. Her still-wet, short blond hair was slicked back Rudolph Valentino style, but was softened by a pink hibiscus behind her left ear. There were crow’s feet round her warmly smiling eyes and the skin was beginning to crêpe on her breast bones and her arms, but she was in great shape and a terrific listener.

‘You can kiss goodbye to that job with Elmer,’ she said when Lysander had finished his account of the night’s escapades.

‘I wouldn’t mind if I hadn’t got Jack, Arthur and Tiny to support,’ sighed Lysander as he spread black-cherry jam on a croissant.

‘You’ve got three kids?’

‘Jack’s my Jack Russell.’

‘Original name.’

The irony was lost on Lysander.

‘Arthur’s my horse. He’s a steeplechaser. He won a lot of races but he’s having a year off with leg trouble. I’m hoping to ride him next season. He’s such a character. Tiny’s a shetland. She’s Arthur’s stable-mate.’

‘They must miss you.’ Sherry edged nearer Lysander.

‘Not as much as I miss them. I’ve got another job to go to,’ he went on gloomily, ‘with Ballensteins, the merchant bank, but that doesn’t start till the first of March. Playing polo for Elmer would have paid off my overdraft and a few bills — and I wanted a suntan to wow the Ballenstein typing pool on the first day.’

‘You’ll wow them anyway,’ murmured Sherry. The boy was positively edible. ‘At least you can get brown round the pool today.’

‘I won’t be in the way?’

‘Have you looked in the mirror recently? But you mustn’t burn.’

The climbing sun had already given a pink glow to his white shoulders. Surreptitiously he undid the top button of Franco’s shorts; they’d castrate him in a minute. Having cleared away breakfast the maid returned with bottles of champagne and Ambre Solaire. Sherry patted the blue-and-white pool-lounger.