The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous by Jilly Cooper

him a nervous breakdown, imitating his bark. Christ, I hope Dad's in a good mood.'
        David Hawkley ran one of the best schools in the country. Nicknamed 'Hatchet' by the boys for the sharpness of his tongue, he was as brilliant a teacher as administrator, but tended ruthlessly to suppress the romantic intuition which had made him the finest classical scholar of his generation. Extremely good-looking, pale, patrician, tight-lipped, like the first Duke of Wellington,with black Regency curls brushed flat and streaked with grey, he gave an impression of banked fires under colossal control as
        though the battles of the Peninsula and Waterloo were being fought internally against despair and the powers of darkness.
        Inflexible by nature, he had been particularly tough with his youngest son because Pippa, his late wife, had adored the boy so much. And Lysander was so agonizingly like Pippa with his wide-apart, blue-green eyes, which always opened wider when he was thinking what to say, the thick glossy brown hair falling over his forehead, and the sweet sleepy smile that totally transformed his face. Like Pippa he had the same air of helplessness, of not being responsible for his actions, of retreating into a dream world and laughing at all the wrong moments.
        Lysander was so different from David's older sons, Alexander and Hector, who, like their father, had got firsts at Cambridge, and were now doing brilliantly in the BBC and the Foreign Office. Both had made suitable marriages, and, unlike their father, hugged their children, cooked Sunday lunch, knew the difference between puff and shortcrust pastry, and changed nappies without any loss of masculinity. Like their father, however, they had endless discussions on what to do for and about Lysander.
        Awaiting his son that morning, David Hawkley was in a particularly savage mood. Normally in January, he would have been basking in the glow of getting half the sixth form into Oxbridge. But such was the bias against public schools that this year only ten boys had scraped in and none of them with scholarships, resulting in endless recriminatory telephone calls from parents. Having been up most of the night, ruthlessly marking down Mocks papers, he didn't think next year's lot would fare any better.
        His mood was even worse because a fox had killed his beloved parrot, Simonides, that morning. Simonides had barked at dogs, chattered away in Greek and Latin, and shouted 'Fuck Off, probably taught to him by Lysander, at parents who wouldn't leave. He had also perched on shoulders as he worked, hopped on to his bed, snuggling into his neck at dawn and been his only solace since Pippa died.
        David was also livid because stories of Lysander's Palm Beach exploits were plastered all over The Scorpion, which had been slyly left around by the boys even
        on his pew in chapel.
        Worst of all, Lysander in his vagueness had put the two letters he'd laboriously written in Palm Beach in the wrong envelopes. Thus instead of receiving a cheery note saying his son was getting on well and would visit him next month, David opened the letter Lysander had written to his highly dubious girlfriend, Dolly. This not only told her of the disgusting things Lysander was intending to do to her sexually when they met up again, but also how he would probably be forced to tap his battleaxe of a father and that he was sure his father in turn was keen on his secretary, 'Mustard', and what a dog she was.
        David Hawkley was almost more outraged by the deterioration in Lysander's spelling and grammar. But he was not prepared to hand the letter back with Sps in the margin, nor tell his son that the word 'lick' did not have two Ks, and that swuzzont-nerve certainly wasn't spelt like that, nor ask what the hell was 'growler guzzling'.
        Icy with rage, David watched his youngest son getting out of a flash car, driven by that fat, deeply unsuitable