Rivals

by Jilly Cooper

  Lizzie looked puzzled. ‘The only Elizabethan house I know in Whychey is Bottom Hollow Court.’

  ‘We changed the name,’ said Valerie. ‘We thought Green Lawns sounded prettier.’

  ‘Where did you live before?’

  ‘Cheam,’ said Valerie, with the flourish of one saying Windsor Castle. ‘We never thought we’d find anywhere as perfect as Cheam. All our help broke down and crayed when we left. But Gloucestershire has so much to offer.’

  At that moment Monica came up.

  ‘I was just saying, Monica, that Gloucestershire has so much to offer, particularly,’ Valerie raised her untouched glass, ‘on a gracious evening like tonight.’

  ‘Not if we don’t get any grub,’ said Monica briskly. ‘We’ve decided not to wait for Rupert. Do either of you need a loo?’

  Outside it had turned bitterly cold. Valerie came out of the house smothered in an almost floor-length mink. I hope hounds get her, thought Lizzie savagely, as she watched Freddie open the door and settle Valerie in, before going round to the driving seat.

  ‘Isn’t she a poppet?’ said James. ‘Knew so much about my programme.’

  ‘Sarah Stratton?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘No, Valerie Jones. I do hope Freddie joins the Board. We could do with a few caring wives like Valerie at Corinium.’

  Lizzie was dumbfounded. Was James such a dreadful judge of character?

  ‘What did you think of Sarah Stratton?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a lot. Didn’t even know who I was. You’d have thought Paul would have briefed her.’

  Off they set in convoy, cars with silver foxes on the bonnet skidding all over the road, rattling the cattle grids, lighting up the last grey curls of the traveller’s joy and the last red beech leaves. Flakes of snow were drifting down as they arrived at Cotchester Town Hall.

  ‘It’s already fetlock-deep in Stow,’ bellowed a woman who’d just driven up with a white windscreen. ‘But of course you’re a coat warmer down here.’

  Cotchester Town Hall, a splendid baroque edifice, two hundred yards down on the other side of the High Street from Corinium Television, had been built in 1902 to replace the old Assembly Rooms. The huge dining-rooms on either side of the ballroom were filled with tables, packed with laughing, chattering people. But in a noisy, glamorous gathering easily the most glamorous, scrutinized table belonged to Corinium Television. The Krug was circulating (Tony was always generous when the evening was deductible) and dinner was now well underway, but Rupert and Beattie Johnson still hadn’t turned up and Sarah Stratton, who should have been on Rupert’s right, and Tony, who should have had Beattie on his left, were trying to hide their irritation and disappointment.

  Lizzie Vereker, however, was having a lovely time sitting next to Freddie Jones. Totally unpompous, instinctively courteous, noisily sucking up his bortsch, rattling off remarks in a broad Cockney accent at a speed which must tax the most accomplished shorthand typist, he was also, despite a scarlet cummerbund strained double by his wide girth, curiously attractive.

  ‘I don’t know anything about electronics,’ confessed Lizzie, taking a belt of Krug, ‘but I know you’re very good at them. James says you’re one of the most powerful men in England.’

  ‘My wife doesn’t fink so,’ said Freddie. ‘It’s a fallacy women are attracted to power. No one’s fallen in love wiv me for years. I’d like to be tall like your ’usband. But I got my height from my muvver and my shoulders from my Dad, and the rest ’ad to go somewhere.’ He roared with laughter.

  At the head of the table Monica listened politely to James Vereker talking about his programme and his ideas for other programmes, and surreptitiously gazed at Sarah Stratton. Her tobacco-brown shawl had slid right off her golden shoulders now. Her piled-up blonde hair emphasized her long slender neck. The seat beside her, which should have been Rupert’s, had now been taken by Bas, Tony’s wicked brother, who was chatting her up like mad.

  She’s so beautiful, thought Monica. What chance could poor Winifred have stood?

  She felt jolted and uneasy. She wished she were at home reading gardening books and listening to Lohengrin.

  Valerie Jones had one aim in life – to rise socially. She had therefore done her homework. Knowing James was coming this evening, she had watched his programme all week so she could comment on every item. She was now sitting next to Paul Stratton, whose recent speech in the House on the proposed Cotchester by-pass she had learnt almost by heart. But Paul was less flattered by her obvious homework than James. He, like Monica, was surreptitiously watching his wife flirting with Bas, and experiencing a tightness round his heart, a jealousy never felt when he was married to Winifred.

  Lizzie’s and Freddie’s conversation had noisily progressed to hunting.

  ‘It was Rupert who got me going,’ said Freddie. ‘Put me up on a really quiet ’orse last March. I was cubbing by August, and huntin’ by November.’

  ‘Weren’t you terrified?’ asked Lizzie in awe.

  ‘I needed three ports and lemons to get me on to the ’orse for the opening meet, I can tell you. But I reckoned if I fell orf I’d bounce anyway.’ He roared with laughter again. ‘I’m going to take up shootin’ next.’

  Huge oval silver plates of roast beef were now coming round.

  ‘How’s Rupert getting on with Beattie Johnson?’ asked Lizzie, helping herself.

  Freddie shrugged. ‘Not very well. She keeps ’earing wedding bells, and we all know Rupe’s tone-deaf. He said the other day he fort the relationship would last till Cheltenham.’

  Lizzie giggled. ‘What a typically Rupert remark. Has she finished ghosting his memoirs yet?’

  ‘Probably providing material for the last chapter at the moment,’ said Freddie. Digging a serving spoon into a creamy mass of potato dauphinoise, he gave a big helping to Lizzie, and was just helping himself when Valerie called sharply down the table, ‘No tatties, Fred-Fred.’

  ‘It’s Friday,’ said Freddie, the Cockney accent wheedling, as the spoon edged towards his plate.

  ‘No tatties, I said.’ Valerie’s voice was pure steel.

  Freddie put back the potatoes.

  Looking across at Lizzie, Sarah Stratton gave her a ghost of a wink.

  ‘You can have my roll, Fred-Fred,’ she said, lobbing it across the table to him.

  Valerie opened her rosebud mouth and shut it again. She knew one must behave like a lady at all times, and not brawl with one’s hubby in public. Then she suddenly noticed that James, who’d ground to a halt with Monica, was looking very put out.

  ‘What’s your programme about on Monday?’ Valerie asked him across the table.

  Paul Stratton, on Monica’s left, seized his opportunity. Turning to her, he said in a low voice, ‘It’s awfully good of you to take Sarah under your wing this evening. I know how close you were to Winifred.’

  Monica almost choked on her roast beef. She didn’t want to talk about Winifred.

  ‘It meant so much to Sarah,’ went on Paul. ‘She was so worried about coming tonight.’

  She doesn’t look worried now, thought Monica, watching Sarah laughing up at Bas.

  ‘I felt guilty at the time,’ said Paul rather heartily. ‘But we are all sinners, are we not? What happened to Sarah and me was part of a loving relationship. All sides behaved with dignity. I feel I can now walk down Cotchester High Street with my head held high.’

  Do you indeed, thought Monica furiously.

  ‘But one can’t destroy something that’s lasted twenty-five years over-night,’ said Paul, spearing a piece of Yorkshire pudding. ‘I still miss Win and the girls, particularly when I see old friends like you and Tony.’

  He wants my sympathy, thought Monica incredulously. He’s utterly destroyed my best friend, and he wants me to feel sorry for him.

  ‘Do you correspond with Win?’ asked Paul.

  Fortunately deliverance appeared in the form of one of the hall porters, who whispered a message in Monica’s ear.

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sp; ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, and banging the table with her spoon, yelled down to Tony at the other end, ‘That was a message from Rupert. He can’t make it after all. Something urgent has come up.’

  ‘Probably Rupert’s cock,’ said Lizzie idly, earning herself a thunderous look of disapproval from James.

  ‘Pity,’ said Sarah lightly. ‘I was 50 looking forward to meeting him.’

  ‘There’ll be other occasions,’ said Bas, leaning back as a waitress removed his plate.

  Tony, for a minute, was unable to disguise his rage.

  ‘Of all the fucking bad manners,’ he exploded.

  Rupert’s defection put a considerable dampener on the evening. It was not until the syllabub had been handed round in tall glasses that Bas Baddingham, who was among other things a partner in a local estate agents, made an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘Has anyone else heard a rumour that Declan O’Hara’s bought Penscombe Priory?’ he asked.

  For a second there was a stunned silence. Then all the women acted with the frantic excitement of dogs when their leads are rattled.

  ‘I’m going on a crash diet tomorrow,’ squeaked Lizzie, dropping her spoon with a clatter.

  ‘Oh why didn’t we buy a house in Penscombe rather than Chalford?’ wailed Sarah Stratton.

  ‘How much did he pay for it?’ asked Valerie Jones.

  ‘Half a million’ said Bas.

  There was a long pause as everyone did frantic sums to work out how much that now made their houses worth.

  ‘That’s an awful lot,’ grumbled Valerie.

  ‘But it’s such a romantic house,’ sighed Lizzie, ‘and that lovely wild garden.’

  ‘Hellishly cold,’ shuddered James.

  ‘And faces North,’ said Valerie.

  ‘So does Declan O’Hara,’ said Sarah dreamily, earning herself a sharp look from Paul.

  ‘Rather a lot to pay for a weekend retreat,’ said James, looking put out.

  To hell with impressing Rupert with the secret he’d been hugging to himself all day, thought Tony. He had a good enough audience as it was, and it was too late for any of them to leak the story to the press tonight.

  ‘Declan’s going to live here,’ said Tony, looking slowly down the table. ‘He’s joining Corinium in September.’

  There was a gasp of excitement, followed by another stunned silence.

  Troublesome, tetchy, but monumentally talented, Declan O’Hara was simply the BBC’s hottest property. His weekly interviews with the great and very famous went out at prime time and were avidly watched and discussed by the entire nation. Nothing like the normal chat show host, he indulged in no back slapping, nor drinking in the green room, nor bandying round of Christian names before a programme. Nor did he bounce around on long pastel sofas, cosily exchanging confidences.

  His victims sat facing him, and, once on air, like a Jesuit priest, he really listened to them, relentlessly probing with the most devastating questions and waiting so unbearably long for an answer that they invariably stumbled into a confession. To the intense disappointment of his armies of female fans, the camera was constantly trained on the person he was interviewing rather than on Declan himself.

  Poor James, thought Lizzie, oh poor, poor James. That must be the series of networked interviews scheduled for the Autumn.

  ‘How the hell did you persuade Declan?’ asked Bas.

  ‘He’s fed up with the Beeb,’ said Tony. ‘The last straw was axing his interview with Paisley. People who saw the video said it was absolute carnage. They didn’t think Paisley would go the fifteen rounds. Then they hacked great contentious chunks out of his interview with Reagan. He wants to go out live, so this kind of thing can’t happen. He will when he joins us.’

  ‘You’ll never get people like Reagan coming down to Cotchester,’ said Paul Stratton.

  ‘You will for Declan,’ said Freddie. ‘The BBC must be as sick as a parrot.’

  ‘They’re not pleased,’ Tony was purring like a great leopard now, ‘but it’s not exactly our job to please the Beeb.’

  Clicking their tongues, the waitresses removed the untouched syllabubs.

  ‘Declan’s a bit of a pinko,’ said Paul, disapprovingly.

  ‘That’s putting it mildly,’ said Tony, ‘but as it looks as though the socialists will be in power next year unless you lot get your act together, we can’t afford to be too right wing any more.’

  Trying, for James’s sake, to curb her excitement, Lizzie turned to Monica. ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘They came to lunch,’ said Monica. ‘Declan seems a super chap.’

  Sarah and Lizzie caught each other’s eyes again and giggled at such a totally inadequate description.

  ‘A bit remote,’ Monica went on, ‘probably shy. His wife is charming.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘Oh yes, exceptional.’

  ‘Pity,’ sighed Sarah, earning another scowl from Paul.

  ‘And three utterly ravishing children,’ said Monica. ‘A boy of twenty at Trinity, Dublin, and two teenage girls about seventeen and fourteen.’

  ‘With Rupert living just across the valley,’ said Lizzie, shaking her shaggy head, ‘Declan must be barking. He’ll have to lock his wife and both daughters up in chastity belts.’

  ‘The youngest kiddy will make a friend for Sharon, although Sharon made a lot of friends at Pony Club camp. I must get them together when the O’Haras move in,’ said Valerie.

  Catching Sarah’s eye yet again, Lizzie decided Sarah was definitely going to be a mate.

  A group of young waitresses from other tables were now hovering, wondering if it were the right moment to ask James Vereker for his autograph. Tony was also looking at James and experiencing a glow of pure pleasure. Corinium’s most popular presenter was feeling all the pique and disquiet of a big fish who’s been basking for years in a rock pool, then suddenly sees the fin of a shark coming over the horizon. James’s exquisitely straight nose would be frightfully put out of joint by Declan’s arrival. James, Tony decided, had been getting a shade above himself recently. There was nothing Tony loved more than cutting people down to size.

  As liqueurs and cigars came round, Tony moved down the table beside Freddie Jones. Now Rupert had stood him up so summarily, he was even keener to get Freddie on to the Board. With satellite television in the offing, Freddie’s millions and electronic expertise would be invaluable.

  ‘When Declan arrives, we’ll get him to interview you,’ said Tony.

  Valerie also changed places and sat next to Monica.

  ‘What a lovely meal, Lady Anthony,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, please call me Monica.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Monica,’ said Valerie gratified. ‘You may, if you like, call me Mousie. That’s Fred-Fred’s pet name for me. I only allow very special friends to become members of the Mousie club.’

  Oblivious of Monica’s look of amazement and Sarah’s and Lizzie’s complete hysterics, Valerie ploughed on. ‘I wanted to pick your brains, Monica, about public schools. Wayne is eleven but he’s extra bright, so we’re thinking of Winchester or even Eton, but I just wondered if you and Tony had been satisfied with Rugborough.’

  ‘Well, Archie’s very happy there,’ said Monica, her raucous voice softening. ‘The only problem, if one’s got a flat in London, is that Rugborough’s on the Central Line and, whenever he gets bored, Archie keeps nipping home on the tube. It drives Tony demented. Archie’s supposed to be doing his O-levels.’

  ‘Our problem,’ said Valerie smugly, ‘is to stop Wayne working. Not that he’s a sissy, Monica – he’s really plucky at sport – but you know how important qualifications are.’

  The band was playing ‘Red Red Wine’. The brilliantly lit ballroom beckoned. The vast springy floor was now filling up with couples. Like a shaken kaleidoscope, the red coats of the men with their flying tails clashed gloriously with the stinging fuchsia pinks and electric blues of the women’s dresses.
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  ‘I wouldn’t mind if Tony’d given me an inkling beforehand,’ said James Vereker furiously, as, oblivious for once of the admiring glances of most of the young girls in the room, he lugged Lizzie round the floor, ‘but I looked such a pratt, knowing nothing about it, and Monica actually admitted never watching my programme. Says she prefers BBC 2. What kind of a Chairman’s wife is that?’

  Lizzie let him rabbit on. She felt terribly sorry for him, but it was such exciting news that Declan was moving to Corinium, and she was fascinated by what was happening on the floor.

  Monica was dancing with the Lord-Lieutenant now. For someone so mad about opera, she had no sense of rhythm. Gyrating three feet apart, they looked like two ostriches on hot bricks.

  ‘Red red wine,’ sang the Lord-Lieutenant over and over again, which were the only words he knew.

  As the tempo speeded up, Valerie took the floor with Freddie, showing off her ‘Come Dancing’ skills, fishtailing, telemarquing, reversing, correcting Freddie sharply whenever he made a mistake. Freddie, his little black shoes twinkling, laughed and took it in good part.

  ‘What on earth did you find to say to James Vereker’s wife?’ asked Valerie, as the band paused for a moment. ‘What a mess, can’t have combed her hair for weeks, and that fraightful gown.’

  ‘Nice lady,’ said Freddie firmly. ‘I liked her a lot.’

  Valerie gazed at Freddie as uncomprehendingly as Lizzie had gazed at James when, earlier, he’d called Valerie ‘a poppet’.

  ‘And that new wife of Paul Stratton’s looks a handful,’ she went on.

  Freddie refrained from saying he’d love to have his hands full of Sarah Stratton.

  Paul and Sarah were dancing together now. He was holding her close, his hands moving over her flawless gold back, as if testing she were real. Perhaps she’d made a special effort to look particularly stunning tonight, thought Lizzie, knowing Winifred was such a chum of Monica’s.

  Tony devoted the rest of the evening to wooing Freddie, but he allowed himself the treat of a dance with Sarah. She was really gorgeous, he decided. One could understand exactly why Paul let his heart rule his very swollen head and ditched Winifred, but would he ever hold Sarah? She had obviously fallen in love with Paul because he was powerful and unobtainable. Now his career had taken a nose dive in the party and he’d been sacked from the Cabinet, he was neither of these things. Nervous of losing his seat at the next election, he kept angling for Tony to offer him an executive directorship on the Corinium Board.