The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous by Jilly Cooper Page A

friend, who should surely have been at work in some office. He then wandered up the path, wincing at the cacophony of the eleven-thirty bell, and stopped to stroke Hesiod, the school cat, who'd been shut out yet again by Mrs Colman, who didn't approve of pets in the office.
        It was Mrs Colman who had drawn David's attention to The Scorpion first thing that morning.
        'I never read that beastly rag, but my Mrs Mop brought it in. I'm so sorry, David,' never
        'David' except when they were alone.
        Now orgasmic with disapproval, Mrs Colman was ushering Lysander into the study. Handsome, big nosed, highcomplexioned and hearty, she got quite skittish when Alexander or Hector visited their father: 'Mr Hawkley, Mr Hector Hawkley to see you.' But Lysander was too hauntingly like his mother, of whom Mrs Colman had been inordinately jealous.
        Lysander noticed that 'Mustard' was very glammed up in cherry-red lambs wool with matching colour on what could be seen of her pursed lips. Catching a discreet waft of Chanel No 5, he afforded her equal coolness.
        'Hi, Dad.' He dumped the carrier bag on his father's vast green-leather desk beside the neatly stacked Mocks papers. 'The Swoop's for Simonides.'
        Timeo Danaos, thought David, peering into the bag. Unable to trust his voice not to quiver, he didn't tell Lysander about Simonides, and merely said: 'Thank you. You'd better sit down.'
        For a man outwardly as bleak as the day, his study was an unexpectedly charming and welcoming room. Most of the wallspace was covered with books, well worn and thumbed in faded crimsons, blues, dark greens and browns, mostly in the original Greek and Latin, with their gold lettering glinting in the flames that glowed from the apple logs in the grate. Within reach were Aristotle's Ethics and the seven volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. And because David Hawkley was not a vain man, tucked away on a top shelf were his own much-admired translations of Plato, Ovid and Euripides. He had been translating Catullus when Pippa died and had done no work on it since.
        On the remaining walls were some good English water-colours, exquisite French engravings of Aesop's fables, a photograph of the Headmasters' Conference last year in Aberdeen, and yet another far more faded photograph of himself winning his blue at Cambridge, breast against the tape, dark head thrown back.
        Over the fireplace was the Poussin of rioting nymphs and shepherds left to him by Aunt Amy, who had also left twenty thousand pounds to Lysander rather than his elder brothers because she felt the boy needed a helping hand. Lysander, to his father's fury, had instantly blued the lot on a steeplechaser called King Arthur, who had promptly gone lame and not run since.
        Unlike Elmer Winterton, David Hawkley believed in longevity, so the holes in the carpet were mostly covered by good rugs. The springs had completely gone in the ancient sofa upholstered in a dark green Liberty print to match the wallpaper. Mrs Colman kept urging him to replace the sofa with something modern, and relaxing, but David didn't want parents to linger, particularly the beautiful, divorced or separated mothers God,
        there were enough of them who
        came to talk about their sons and ended up talking about themselves, their eyes pleading for a chance to find comfort in comforting him.
        And now Lysander was sprawled on the same low sofa, huddled in Ferdie's long, dark blue overcoat, re-adjusting his long legs, yet as seductive in his drooping passivity as Narcissus or Balder the Beautiful. But, modest like his father, he always seemed unaware of his miraculous looks.
        David didn't offer Lysander a glass of the medium-dry sherry he kept for parents, although he could have done with one himself, because he didn't want any conviviality to creep in.
        Lysander, who always had difficulty meeting his father's cold,