Rivals

by Jilly Cooper

  Beyond Simon was Tony’s PA, Cyril Peacock, DFC, Corinium’s ex-Sales Manager, once a stocky, jolly, assertive fellow, sensational at his job. The point of a PA, however, is that he should be utterly loyal. Some Chief Executives in television buy this loyalty with money, which is dangerous, because someone else can buy it with more money. Tony bought it with fear. After making Cyril his PA, and sometime publicity officer, Tony had encouraged him to invest his savings in a company that promptly went broke. Now the terror of the Luftwaffe was someone Tony hung his coat on – a poor old dodderer in his early sixties, with loss of job and pension hanging over his head like a sword of Damocles. Tony took great pleasure in making Cyril do his dirty work – he had four people for him to fire on Monday.

  On Tony’s left was Miss Madden, his secretary, also in her sixties, plain, and utterly dedicated, whose chilblains were itching because of the central heating, and who never let anyone into Tony’s office without an appointment except Cameron Cook, on whom she had a love—hate crush.

  Finally, down the table, opposite Cameron sat James Vereker, the impossibly good-looking, beautifully coiffeured Anchorman of the six o’clock regional news programme, ‘Cotswold Round-Up’.

  James should have been in the newsroom getting ready for the evening’s programme, but, hating to miss anything, he had muscled in on the meeting and was now using Tony’s absence to rewrite the links he would have to say later on air to fit his own speech patterns.

  Glancing across at Cameron, James wondered if she and Tony had rehearsed the whole meeting in bed earlier this week, turning each other on by seeing who could be the most gratuitously bloody to everyone else. He looked at Cameron’s dark-brown cashmere jersey, snugly fitting the lean body, the pale-brown suede skirt, the Charles Jourdan boots and the lascivious unmade-up face, and felt a wave of loathing. Today her short hair had been coaxed upwards in gelled spikes, like a hedgehog who’d rolled in chicken fat.

  James pointedly moved the arrangement of Spring flowers left over from Wednesday’s board meeting up a couple of inches to obscure his view of her and, getting out a packet of Polos, handed one to Miss Madden, who went slightly pink as she accepted it.

  James offered Polos to no one else. He knew who to suck up to. Properly courted, Miss Madden would sing his praises to Tony and admit him to the inner sanctum when necessary.

  As Tony walked back into the room, everyone rose from their chairs except Cameron, who pointedly ignored him. Perhaps they’ve had a bust-up, thought James Vereker hopefully.

  The good thing about Tony, reflected Charles Fairburn, Head of Religious Programmes, was that he did cut out the waffle. There was a good chance that Charles, who was going to the ballet at Covent Garden that evening, would be out of the building by five.

  ‘I’d like to start,’ said Tony briskly, ‘by congratulating Cameron on being nominated for a BAFTA award. As you all know, “Four Men went to Mow” has not only been a huge network success, and sold everywhere overseas, but also because of the exceptional camera work, attracted scores of tourists to the area, and last month toppled “Howard’s Way” in the ratings. We’re looking for more programmes like this that project the area into the network.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Cyril Peacock, his false teeth rattling with nerves.

  Tony’s conveniently forgotten that ‘Four Men went to Mow’ was my idea in the first place, thought Simon Harris bitterly. Cameron, still ignoring Tony, gazed sourly at the framed photograph on the wall of him smilingly assisting Princess Margaret to plant a cherry tree on the Corinium front lawn.

  Christ, they have had a row, thought James.

  ‘I’d like to give the go-ahead for a second series,’ Tony went on. ‘We’ve got the co-production money again from USBC, but I think it would be a good idea, Cameron, if you introduced perhaps a black unmarried mother into the cottage of the agricultural students to appeal to the IBA.’

  Charles Fairburn suppressed a grin. The IBA were crazy about minority groups. Cameron looked outraged.

  ‘Black unmarried mothers don’t become agricultural students,’ she snarled.

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ said Tony smoothly. ‘She could be the girlfriend of one of the four boys.’

  ‘For Chrissake, why not have a gay shepherdess with one leg?’ said Cameron.

  ‘Why not a deaf, unemployed merry peasant?’ suggested Charles Fairburn with a hiccup. ‘Or a handicapped harvester?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ snapped Tony.

  He then went on to OK plans for an obscure Michael Tippett opera, which Cameron also scowled at, detecting Lady Baddingham’s influence (Tony’s wife was crazy about opera) and a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream as a sop to Stratford-on-Avon which was just within the Corinium boundary.

  Now it was the turn of James Vereker, who, having finished re-writing his links, helped himself to a glass of Perrier and then suggested Corinium ought to show its ‘caring face, Tony’ and do a series on poverty and the aged.

  ‘Jesus, how turgid,’ said Cameron, glaring at him through the screen of fading daffodils. ‘Of all the boring . . .’

  Tony raised his hand for silence, his huge signet ring catching the light.

  ‘Not a bad idea. We could do a very cheap pilot to impress the IBA. We don’t have to make the series. Perhaps Cyril,’ he smiled malevolently at his PA, ‘could front it. He’s been looking rather old and poverty-stricken lately.’

  Cyril Peacock cracked his twitching face, trying to smile back. Thus encouraged, James suggested they should do something ‘very strong, Tony’ on rioting and drug abuse at Cotchester University. Swiftly Cameron swooped, the falcon Tony had trained, tearing into James:

  ‘What a crappy awful idea,’ she screamed. ‘D’you want to antagonize the entire Tourist Board because everyone’s scared to visit Cotchester any more? No one will want to invest money here. We’re trying to boost the area for Chrissake.’

  ‘What about a programme on the role of women in Cotchester town hall?’ stammered Simon Harris, tugging at his straggling yellow beard.

  ‘And have the town halls at Bath, Southampton, Oxford, Winchester, Stratford, et cetera et cetera in an uproar because we haven’t done programmes on them,’ said Cameron crushingly.

  ‘I thought your idea, Tony, of interviewing the wives of celebrities living in the area looked a winner,’ said Cyril Peacock, desperate to get back into favour.

  ‘“Behind Every Famous Man”?’ Cameron turned on Cyril furiously. ‘That was my idea.’

  ‘We could start with one of our director’s wives, or perhaps,’ Cyril lumbered on, ‘even Lady Baddingham.’

  Tony looked not unpleased. ‘I think that would be a bit close to home.’

  ‘Why not do a series on the very very rich?’ said Charles Fairburn, who had not quite sobered up, ‘They’re far more of a minority group than anyone else. We could start with you, Tony.’

  He was quelled by an icy glance from Tony, who, aware that the meeting was slightly lacking in carnage, suddenly realized that his Head of Operations, whose role was to tell creative people what they could not do, was missing.

  ‘Where’s Victor Page?’ he said ominously.

  ‘Gone to his grandmother’s funeral,’ said Miss Madden, her lips tightening.

  ‘But he killed off two grandmothers during Wimbledon last year.’

  ‘This was his step-granny,’ said Miss Madden. ‘His mother married twice.’

  ‘No doubt his other step-grandmother will pop off during next Wimbledon,’ said Tony, making a note on his memo pad. That would be five people for Cyril to fire on Monday.

  Tony then turned to the points made during his talk with Lady Gosling that morning. There was no need to let his production staff get complacent.

  ‘Several viewers,’ he said, ‘have complained about field mice copulating too long on our “Nature at Night” programme.’

  Charles Fairburn, who had a round red face like a Dutch cheese, suppressed another smile
. He’d better do his expenses. He hadn’t been anywhere this week, but he needed some cash to buy drinks for his airline-steward friend at the ballet tonight.

  ‘Cloakroom and gratuities £5,’ wrote Charles Fairburn. ‘Drinks with the Archdeacon £15.’ That was pushing it; the Archdeacon was teetotal, but the Accounts Department didn’t know it. They’d be shut if Tony didn’t wrap up this meeting soon.

  ‘On the kids’ programmes front,’ went on Tony, ‘we’ve also had complaints about too much violence in “Dorothy Dove”.’

  ‘What kind of violence?’ asked Simon Harris.

  ‘Pecking Priscilla Pigeon and pulling out all her feathers.’

  James was tempted to say his children had absolutely adored that particular episode, but decided not to. The Head of Kids’ Programmes had rejected his advances at the Christmas party; he didn’t owe her any favours.

  ‘Dorothy Dove is supposed to be a symbol of peace,’ said Tony.

  ‘Peaceful is the dove that is strongly armed – or beaked in Dorothy’s case,’ murmured Charles Fairburn and regretted it.

  ‘There have been complaints,’ went on Tony nastily, ‘about insufficient religious content in our religious programmes. I’ll talk to you after the meeting, Charles, and the IBA are very unhappy about “Rags to Riches”.’

  Simon Harris turned dark red. It was he who had bought the format for ‘Rags to Riches’ from America and adapted it for the British network.

  ‘But the ratings are sensational,’ he protested.

  ‘I know, but the IBA have pointed out that the contestants are far too glamorous and upmarket. We do need a few unemployed frumps to add a touch of reality, and please remember our ethnic minorities.’

  ‘You can borrow my black unmarried mother,’ said Cameron, shooting Tony a venomous look.

  ‘The IBA,’ went on Tony, squinting down the polished table, like a daily looking for smears, ‘also feel we should have more women on the Corinium Board. After all, Lady Evesham’s nearly sixty-five, so we must all wrack our brains for some powerful ladies.’

  The men in the room exchanged glances of horror. Would Tony use this as an excuse to put the appalling Cameron Cook on the Board?

  ‘And,’ went on Tony swiftly, ‘they feel we still haven’t enough directors who live in the area.’

  That, thought James savagely, also includes Cameron, and her exquisite Regency house on the outskirts of Cotchester.

  Now Tony was saying, not without complacency, that Freddie Jones, the electronics multi-millionaire, and Rupert Campbell-Black, the Minister for Sport, who both lived in the area, would be coming in his party to the West Cotchester Hunt Ball that evening, and he would be sounding them out as possible directors.

  For a second, outrage overcame the Head of Sport’s terror of Tony: ‘But Rupert Campbell-Black’s been consistently vile about our coverage,’ he spluttered. ‘You’d think it was our fault Cotchester was bottom of the Third Division.’

  ‘Good name on the writing paper. We’ve got to keep our local MPs sweet, with the franchise coming up,’ said Tony. ‘Anyway he’s far too tied up with football hooligans to come to more than a couple of meetings a year, so he won’t get a chance to make a nuisance of himself. ‘

  ‘Don’t you be too sure of it,’ spat Cameron. ‘Macho pig.’

  Smug in the knowledge that he was the only member of the staff who’d been asked to join Tony’s party at the hunt ball that evening, James Vereker couldn’t resist saying, as the meeting broke up, how much he and Lizzie, his wife, were looking foward to it, and what time would Tony like them for drinks.

  ‘About eight,’ said Tony, gathering up his papers.

  James could feel the laser beams of loathing and jealousy directed at him from all around the table, particularly from Cameron. That should rattle the stuck-up bitch, he thought. Since she’d been nominated for a BAFTA, she’d been getting much too big for her Charles Jourdan boots.

  As Tony went out of the room, straightening the photograph of himself and Princess Margaret as he passed, James glanced at his watch. Four-thirty. He was on the air in an hour and a half and they would wrap up the programme by seven. If he had to drive the eleven miles home, bath and change, he’d be pushed for time. He’d better have a quick shower and blow dry his hair beforehand; then he could legitimately keep his make-up on – just bronzing gel, a bit of creme puff and dark brown mascara – for the ball. One got so pale in February.

  He considered whether to wear his turquoise evening shirt, which brought out the blue-green in his eyes, or a white one with a turquoise bow-tie, then decided on the former. The gel might show up on the white shirt.

  Wandering into the newsroom, he selected the secretary who was most in love with him and handed her twenty pages of longhand, entitled ‘Poverty and the Aged: A Treatment’, by James Vereker.

  ‘I think you’ll have rather fun with this one,’ he told her. ‘Could you centre the title in caps? I don’t need it till first thing Monday morning.’

  Entirely sobered up now, Charles Fairburn followed Tony into his office. He’d never get to Covent Garden and his airline steward now. But, to his amazement, Tony greeted him warmly: ‘Ratings aren’t bad, Charles. Wheel in the Bishop of Cotchester, a few Sikhs and a woman priest next week to talk about the meaning of self-denial and Lent; that should keep Lady Gosling happy. Look, I’m reading the lesson in church on Sunday. Rather tricky phrasing, I want to get the sense right. Could you just run through it with me?’

  RIVALS

  5

  James Vereker drove home in his Porsche, warmly aware that ‘my programme’, as he always referred to it, had gone well. James Vereker’s outstanding qualities, apart from his dazzling good looks, were his total egotism and chronic insecurity. In order not to miss himself on television, he had even been known to take a portable television into a restaurant. A huge local celebrity, much of whose time was spent opening fêtes and PAs’ legs, he disliked going to London, or even worse abroad, because no one recognized him. When he’d worked in radio, he used to dread some crisis blowing up in Southern Europe or the Middle East in case he couldn’t pronounce it.

  Aware that he was dismissed as a popinjay by the editors, journalists and researchers who got ‘Cotswold Round-Up’ on air, and who were jealous of his inflated salary and his celebrity status, he was given to little tantrums, yet couldn’t resist seeking constant reassurance. Cameron Cook had even suggested the parrot used in Corinium’s Christmas production of Treasure Island should be given a permanent squawk-on part, telling James he was wonderful after every programme. He kept his job because he was quite good at it and because he always won the fight for viewers from the BBC.

  Back at James’s house, Birgitta, the children’s curvaceous nanny, had just lovingly finished ironing both James’s white and turquoise evening shirts, and was scenting herself and putting on make-up for James’s return.

  I wish Birgitta would spend slightly more time putting the children to bed, thought James’s wife, Lizzie, as they swarmed into her study demanding attention. Lizzie had had two novels published and well reviewed. A third was on the way, but it was causing a great deal of morning sickness.

  She and James had been married eight years, and Lizzie had supported James on her publishing salary in the early days when he was trying to break into television. Once very pretty (she had the bright eyes and long questing nose of a vole, and the shaggy light brown hair of a clematis montana clambering over an old apple tree in winter), she had recently put on too much weight.

  The Verekers lived in a large messy house with a large messy garden two miles down the valley from Rupert Campbell-Black, where the Frogsmore stream hurtled into a large reed-fringed lake. They had bought Lake House, as it was called, five years ago, just after James had got the job at Corinium, when it had seemed ridiculously cheap. Viewing it in high summer, they had only seen its romantic aspect, not realizing that for at least five months of the year it was so low in the valley that it never
saw the sun and would be quite inaccessible when the snows came in winter.

  This mattered little to James because he spent so much time at Corinium. When the house got snowed up, he simply didn’t come home for several days. But it was not good for Lizzie, who wrote there all day, eating too many biscuits to keep out the cold, or for the children who caught one cold after another, or for the nannies who found it dank and depressing, except when James was at home.

  For Lizzie life turned on the children not getting ill, and nannies not leaving so that she had time to write. Unfortunately James couldn’t resist pulling the prettier nannies, who invariably walked out, when he moved on to someone else. Lizzie always found out the score by reading the nannies’ diaries when they were shopping in Cotchester or nearby Stroud. Birgitta, the current nanny, wrote her diary in Swedish, which Lizzie couldn’t understand. But with the aid of a Swedish dictionary she was beginning to crack the code, and the word ‘James’ appeared rather too often. In fact you only had to see the way Birgitta perked up when James came through the door. Lizzie was used to his infidelity. She realized he needed little adventures to boost his ego, but they still upset her. She would have liked an admirer herself, but felt she was too fat to attract anyone.

  Lizzie nearly had a fit when she heard James banging the front door. She’d stopped writing far too late, wrestling to get at least a draft of the first chapter down on paper. Still struggling mentally with her plot, she’d spent too long washing her hair and in the bath. Then she discovered that the long low-cut black silk ball dress which she’d decided to wear was far too tight. Not even shoe horns or the disdainful tugging of Birgitta could get her into it, so she had to wear another dress, dark red velvet to match her distraught face, and calf-length so it wouldn’t conceal her ankles which had swelled up in the bath.

  Finally, because she couldn’t see out, she’d cut her fringe with the kitchen scissors, not realizing that Birgitta had just used them to cut rind off the children’s bacon, so now her fringe stuck together and reeked of bacon. She was about to wash it again when James arrived. He hadn’t been home so early in months; usually he hung around the Corinium bar mopping up adulation.