‘People eat snake in Australia,’ he informed his admiring audience. ‘It tastes just like fanny.’
‘How would you know?’ asked Ogborne pointedly.
‘My brother told me,’ said Baby, to howls of mirth.
‘Baby is so attractive,’ sighed Simone.
Crashing around, like a fretful moth, searching for Rannaldini, Hermione perked up when the singing started and she won first round in the not-so-friendly fight to hog the microphone.
‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ was soon blasting squirrels and pigeons out of the trees within a half-mile radius.
Baby, after several snorts of cocaine, was in a wicked mood, his eyes glittering, his bronze curls tangled round his handsome face. Griselda was thumping him on the back for being exactly the right weight at the moment, when Hermione charged up to them.
‘Please protect me from that common little man.’
‘Which one?’ Griselda stared around.
‘Sexton,’ hissed Hermione.
‘Oh, right,’ said Baby thoughtfully. ‘Not many people know Sexton went to Eton.’
‘Eton,’ said Hermione incredulously. ‘Eton?’
‘Certainly did. Sexton thought he’d get on better in the film business if he acquired an East End accent, so he took elocution lessons.’
‘He’s so modest, he doesn’t like to talk about his very grand family,’ murmured Griselda.
Five minutes later, she and Baby were crying with laughter as they watched Sexton, looking as delightedly bewildered by Hermione’s unexpected attentions as Trevor had over Ogborne’s Scotch egg.
‘You’re not to tease,’ Hermione was telling him roguishly. ‘One can always tell an Etonian from his air of quiet authority. I expect you played cricket against my very good friend Rupert Campbell-Black, who must have been at Harrow at around the same time.’
Baby was so entranced he could hardly be dragged away to sing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ with Granny and Mikhail.
‘Oh, I love this tune,’ sighed Flora.
She was just wondering where George was when Baby sang, ‘And when you stopped and smiled at me,’ and, looking straight across at her, jolted her with a lightning bolt of desire.
The moment the song was over, Baby launched into ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and, watched in amazement by the entire party, seized Flora’s hand and danced her off into the park, round and round under the stars through the foam of cow-parsley.
They were both so drunk they nearly fell over one of the set designer’s pots of paint near the cloisters. Seizing his brushes, they were busy writing ‘Death to Rannaldini’, with cackles of laughter, on the chapel walls when they saw evil, leather-clad Clive gliding up on the right and hastily changed it to ‘Death to Racism’ before running away.
‘“Gee, it’s great, after staying up late, walking my Baby back home,”’ Flora’s piercingly sweet voice echoed round the valley, as she bore Baby up the valley to her parents’ house, Angels’ Reach, because she’d promised to feed Charity the cat.
‘What was Rannaldini like in bed?’ asked Baby.
‘A genius. Mesmerizing, imaginative, with immense concentration, but utterly depraved. He’d have taken me down to hell.’
To their right was a long lake, even shorter of water than Rannaldini’s. White daisies spilt over a low stone wall, lilies poured forth scent out of a tangle of weeds.
‘What was his watch-tower like?’
‘The top floor’s all bed with a mural of wildly applauding crowds in evening dress.’
‘We’ll have applauding clouds,’ murmured Baby, idly stroking the nape of Flora’s long neck beneath her short back and sides.
Oh, help, thought Flora, I want to sleep with Baby so badly but it’s a cul-de-fucking-no-sack.
Ahead, stone angels stretched up from each corner of the roof, plucking star daisies out of a grey suede sky. In protest against their being so late, Charity the cat had left a small disc of sick on the hall floorboards. Baby most resourcefully scraped it up with his platinum Amex card.
‘Seriously good pictures,’ he said, drifting from one big underfurnished room to another, as Flora opened a tin for Charity and a bottle of Moët.
‘My father owns a gallery.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In London and up to no good, probably. He’s very attractive.’
‘Like his daughter,’ said Baby. He led her out into the garden, waltzed her round and round until the stars joined in the dance, and they collapsed on the dewy grass, their hearts hammering.
For a second, Baby laughed down at her, his bland, brown, unrepentant face irresistibly young and beautiful, caught in the lights from the house. Then he kissed her.
Rigid with shock, Flora clamped her mouth shut, but such was the darting insistence of his tongue that her lips soon opened, and she was kissing him back with ecstatic enthusiasm.
‘I thought you only liked men,’ she gasped, when she finally drew breath.
‘No more Mr Nice Gay,’ crowed Baby. ‘I take the best of both sexes, and you are definitely the best. I fancy you absolutely squint-eyed.’
‘You’re drunk.’ Flora made a last attempt to keep control, but as he rolled her towards him to unzip her dress, the warmth of his body melted her resistance.
‘I love George,’ she mumbled, into his smooth, scented shoulder.
‘George has gone off like a prawn in the sun. Deserves all he gets. Oh, you little beaut.’
Baby was a master of the tease. Running his fingers round the side of one nipple until every nerve of her breast was crying out, stroking her belly over and over again, letting his hand creep up her inner thighs, just stopping short of her clitoris, until she was screaming to have his cock inside her, and even then he was totally in control.
When Charity came out, mewing in outrage that plastered humans had mistaken Pedigree Chum for Go-Cat, Baby just laughed and said, ‘Cattus interruptus.’
He was so relaxed.
There were daisies and little shimmering moths all over the lawn and stars all over the sky. Gradually they seemed to merge.
‘I’m having such a heavenly time,’ mumbled Flora, ‘but I’m far too drunk to come.’
‘Wanna bet.’ Sliding out of her, turning her over, Baby kissed each bump of her backbone, slowly, slowly progressing downwards.
‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’
‘Yes, I thought you’d enjoy that.’
‘Do I taste of snake?’ mumbled Flora.
‘No, only of Paradise.’
‘How d’you know so much about women?’ asked Flora, as they lay back, stupefied with pleasure, on the grass.
‘I used to be married.’
‘What?’ Flora sat bolt upright.
‘To a singer.’
‘Why did it break up?’
Baby took a slug of Moët. ‘She asked me what I thought of her in the Verdi Requiem. I was foolish enough to tell her. She never spoke to me again.’
‘Did you mind?’
‘Nope.’
‘Isn’t it rather immoral, pretending you’re gay when you’re not?’
‘Certainly not. However would I get rid of all those ugly cows if they suspected I was heterosexual?’
‘You are seriously degenerate,’ said Flora, as they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
30
Waking cold, stiff and horribly hung over in the morning, Flora was demented. How could she have done this to George? He’d never forgive her if he found out. Rannaldini had spies everywhere and was bound to tell him. ‘I’m being punished for shortchanging that cat,’ she moaned, as she crunched around on the Go-Cat the furious Charity had up-ended all over the kitchen floor.