Rivals

by Jilly Cooper

  But Paul shouldn’t have patronized Tony in the past. How much more amusing, thought Tony, to employ Paul’s new wife instead. Holding her dazzlingly full and exciting body, breathing in the scent of her thickly piled-up blonde hair, trying not to gaze too openly at the beautiful gold breasts, Tony felt the stirrings of lust. If she was any good, she’d be perfect to present the new late night show. That would really put Paul in a tizz.

  ‘It’s terribly exciting about Declan,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m such a fan. Those programmes are like Rembrandts. Did you see the one on Placido Domingo?’

  ‘You must come and meet him as soon as they move in,’ said Tony. ‘You’re going to be a distinct asset to Gloucestershire.’

  Suddenly Sarah looked terribly young. Even in the dim light Tony could see she was blushing.

  ‘It was angelic of you to ask us tonight, knowing what friends you were, particularly your wife, of Winifred’s. Paul’s friends haven’t been exactly friendly. They think I’ve screwed up Paul’s career.’

  Tony gave a piratical smile. All he needs between his teeth is a cutlass, thought Sarah.

  ‘You’ve given Paul a cast-iron excuse not to be Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘He’d never have made it. He has neither the bottle nor the conviction.’

  ‘You’re speaking of the man I love,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Tony didn’t sound it. ‘I’m going to tell James Vereker to interview you for our new “Behind Every Famous Man” series.’

  Sarah smiled, showing very small, white, even teeth.

  ‘You’d do better to interview Valerie. She drives poor Fred-Fred on with a pitchfork.’

  ‘Probably spent half the day reading etiquette books on the correct way to hold your pitchfork,’ said Tony.

  Back at the table, the waiter poured more Krug, but Tony put a hand over his glass.

  ‘I’m driving to London after this,’ he said. ‘We’re announcing Declan’s appointment tomorrow, so all hell’s going to break loose.’

  ‘The Gloucestershire poacher strikes again,’ said Lizzie, receiving a sharp kick on the ankle from James.

  As everyone swarmed out into the High Street after the ‘Post Horn Gallop’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’, they found a thick layer of snow on the pavements. Down the road, high above them, the Corinium red ram was already wearing a white barrister’s wig of snow on his curly poll.

  ‘Drive carefully, Tony,’ called Monica, as Percy the chauffeur held open the door of the Rolls for her. ‘See you tomorrow evening.’ Happily she settled back in the grey seat. Soon she’d be home to at least an hour of Lohengrin before she fell asleep.

  ‘Bet the old ram’s making a Cook’s detour via Hamilton Terrace,’ said James Vereker savagely, as Tony set off for London in the BMW, waving goodbye to the last of his guests.

  Tony drove towards the motorway, but, sure enough, as soon as he’d shaken everyone else off, he did a U-turn and, just as the snow started to fall again, belted back to Cotchester.

  RIVALS

  7

  It was three o’clock in the morning but Cameron Cook was still working on the first story outline for the new series of ‘Four Men went to Mow’. On Monday she’d start commissioning writers. Ones that were talented and bullyable were not easy to find.

  Beyond having a shower and brushing her teeth, she’d made no preparations for Tony, no satin sheets, no black silk negligées, no Fracas – the sharp, dry scent he so adored and which he brought her by the bucket – sprayed round the room. She was wearing the same brown cashmere jersey she’d worn to the office earlier, tight black trousers and no make-up. After twenty months, the one thing that held Tony was her indifference, her refusal to jump to his ringmaster’s whip.

  Perhaps he wouldn’t turn up at all to punish her for being so bloody at the meeting. But she was so pissed off with him going to the Hunt Ball without her, and even worse inviting that jerk James Vereker, that she’d refused to speak to him after the meeting and stormed off home. She mustn’t drop her guard like that. Once Tony detected weakness, he stuck the knife in.

  All the same her stint in England had been terrifically exciting. She remembered so well the July day she had arrived. Tony had met her at Heathrow and driven her straight down to Cotchester to the quiet Regency terrace to the honey-gold house he had bought her. It was the only time she’d ever known him nervous.

  Inside, as they’d gone from room to room, as finely proportioned and delicately coloured as the eggs of a bird, primrose and Wedgwood blue, lemon-yellow and cream, pale green and white, with large sash windows, and pretty alcoves with shelves for china scooped out of the walls, Cameron hadn’t said a word. Apart from a fully equipped kitchen and a television set in the living-room, there was no furniture except a huge brass four-poster in the upstairs attic, which spread across the whole top floor.

  Cameron had opened the window and gazed out at her new back yard with its pale-pink roses, and three ancient apple trees at the end. Someone had just mowed the lawn, and, as she breathed in the smell of grass cuttings, and admired the grey-gold spire of Cotchester Cathedral rising from its bright-green water meadows, she burst into tears.

  Tony, who hadn’t touched her until then, thinking she hated the house, or was feeling homesick, moved forward like lightning and took her in his arms.

  ‘Darling, what’s the matter? We’ll find something else if you don’t like it.’

  Then Cameron sobbed into his Prussian-blue silk shirt that it was the loveliest house she’d ever seen, and why didn’t they christen the bed – and their love-making turned out to be even more rapturous than it had been in New York.

  But that was the last time she’d displayed weakness in his presence. From the moment she’d arrived she’d had no time to consider whether she was homesick or not. When she wasn’t producing and master- minding every detail of the thirteen episodes of ‘Four Men went to Mow’, battling with directors, designers, actors and technicians, who weren’t at all pleased to have a twenty-seven-year-old American upstart ordering them around, she was furnishing the house, driving from Southampton to Stratford, from Bath to Oxford, picking up antiques, thoroughly acquainting herself with the Cotswold area and seeking new ideas for programmes.

  Otherwise her life revolved around Tony. He managed to spend several evenings a week with her; people noticed he’d started leaving official dinners and cocktail parties abnormally early. He also took her to all the big events in the television calendar: Edinburgh, Monte Carlo, Cannes, New York, New Orleans, where she’d justified her existence a hundred times over selling Corinium programmes and acquiring new ones.

  But there was still the married side of Tony’s life, from which she was so ruthlessly excluded. She had only been once to his beautiful house, The Falconry, when Monica and the children were away, and that, she was sure, was because he wanted to show the place off.

  Going into the drawing-room, she had exclaimed with pleasure at the Renoir over the mantelpiece.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ screamed Tony, ‘or you’ll have the entire Gloucestershire constabulary on the doorstep.’

  Cameron had only met Monica once or twice at office parties, or at the odd business reception. And occasionally Monica sailed into Corinium to collect Tony. The galling thing was she never recognized Cameron. In one way, Monica’s lack of interest in Tony’s job made it much easier for him to deceive her. In another, brooded Cameron, if you had a rival, you wanted her at least to be aware of your existence.

  ‘Lady Baddingham is a real lady,’ Miss Madden was fond of saying when she wanted to get under Cameron’s skin.

  Cameron liked to think Tony only stayed with Monica because the silly old bag gave him respectability, and he didn’t want any scandal before the franchise was renewed.

  Getting up from her desk, Cameron wandered round the living-room. It was the only room in the house she’d redecorated, papering the walls in scarlet with a tiny blue-grey flower pattern and adding scarlet curtains, and a blue-grey
carpet, sofas and chairs. She had acquired a new piano in England, lacquered in red, but had brought with her from America the dentist’s chair upholstered in scarlet Paisley, the dartboard, the gold toe from the Metropolitan Museum, and all the videos of her NBS programmes. Beside them on the shelf were now stacked the thirteen prize-winning episodes of ‘Four Men went to Mow’ and the two documentaries Cameron had also made on All Souls’ College, Oxford, and on Anthony Trollope, who’d based Barchester on Salisbury, which was, after all, within the Corinium boundary.

  On the mantelpiece was a signed photograph of the four young actors who’d starred in ‘Four Men went to Mow’, and a huge phallic cactus, given to her as an end-of-shoot present by the entire cast. ‘Darling Cameron,’ said the card, which was still propped against it, ‘You’re spikey, but you’re great.’

  After all the screaming matches, it had been a great accolade.

  Tony obviously wasn’t coming, Cameron decided; she’d blown it once and for all. The weekend stretched ahead, nothing but work until more work on Monday.

  For consolation, she picked up that week’s copy of Broadcast, which fell open at a photograph of her cuddling a dopey looking Jersey cow. ‘Producer Cameron Cook on location during filming of her BAFTA-nominated series: “Four Men went to Mow”,’ said the caption. ‘The lucky cow is on the left.’

  Going over to the window, Cameron realized it was snowing. There were already three inches on top of her car, and soft white dustsheets had been laid over the houses opposite. Snow had also filled up the cups of the winter jasmine that jostled with the Virginia creeper climbing up the front of her house. If you wanted to get to the top you had to jostle, reflected Cameron. Tony had hinted he might put her on the Board, but she knew James Vereker, Simon Harris, and all the Heads of Departments would block her appointment to the last ditch. She had interfered at all levels, criticizing every programme, and every script she could lay her hands on. She knew she was unpopular with everyone in the building. But she didn’t want popularity, she wanted power and the freedom to make the programmes she wanted without running to Tony for protection.

  She was so deep in thought, she didn’t notice the BMW drawing up, nor that Tony was outside until he lobbed a snowball against the window. She wished he didn’t look so revoltingly handsome in that red coat. Cameron detested hunting, not because she felt sorry for the fox, but because of the bloody-minded arrogance of people like Tony and Rupert Campbell-Black who hunted.

  ‘How was it?’ she asked, getting a bottle of champagne from the fridge.

  ‘Great.’

  Immediately her antagonism came flooding back.

  ‘How was Rupert?’ She knew her interest would bug Tony.

  ‘Bastard didn’t turn up. But Bas had heard a rumour that Declan had bought The Priory, so I told everyone he was joining Corinium. It was OK,’ he added, seeing Cameron’s look of horror. ‘It was too late for any of them to ring the papers. You should have seen James’s face.’

  Cameron grinned.

  ‘That’s an improvement,’ said Tony. ‘Why were you so bloody bootfaced at the meeting?’

  ‘I had a migraine.’

  They both knew she was lying. But, excited by dancing with Sarah and upsetting James, and even more by the prospect of bringing Cameron to shuddering gasping submission, Tony didn’t want a row. He soon had her undressed and into the huge brass bed, now curtained with pale-grey silk, which he or rather Corinium had paid for, just as they had paid for the whole house. The excuse was that putting up visiting VIPs in Cameron’s spare room would be cheaper than the Cotchester Arms, which served awful food and had no air conditioning.

  ‘Do you do this to keep your mind off your work?’ asked Tony later, as a naked Cameron straddled him in all her angry, voracious beauty.

  Cameron leaned over and took a gulp of champagne.

  ‘Who says it takes my mind off my work? I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘What?’ Feeling those muscles gripping his cock, Tony wondered how he ever refused her anything.

  ‘I want to produce Declan when he arrives in September.’

  Leaving Cameron at six o’clock, Tony drove up to London. He’d put on a jersey over his evening shirt, and planned to bath, shave and breakfast at his flat in Rutland Gate. As he was going up a deserted Kensington High Street, his car was splashed by another – some celebrity being raced the opposite way to Breakfast Television at Lime Grove, lights on in the back as he mugged up his notes.

  Red coat over his arm, Tony let himself into his flat. For a second he thought he’d been burgled. Clothes littered the hall; bottles, glasses and unwashed plates covered the kitchen table. Then, going into Monica’s bedroom, Tony discovered the naked figure of his son Archie, come home once again from Rugborough on the tube, fast asleep in the arms of an extremely pretty, very young girl.

  Tony’s bellow of rage nearly sent them through the double glazing. The girl dived under the flowered sheets. Archie mumbled that he was terribly sorry, but he’d thought his parents were at the Hunt Ball.

  ‘We were,’ snapped Tony. ‘Now I’m going to have a bath, and I want her out of here by the time I’ve finished.’

  At least Archie had the manners to take the girl home, reflected Tony, as he soaked for the second time in twelve hours in a boiling bath. Pretty little thing too. He’d always been nervous Archie might turn out a bit AC/DC. Having a very dominant but adoring mother didn’t help, but he was pleased to see Archie following in his father’s footsteps. Tony was extremely fond of his elder son. He was frying eggs and bacon when Archie returned very sheepishly.

  Having bawled him out for his disgraceful behaviour, Tony said, ‘Where the hell does your housemaster think you are?’

  ‘In bed, I suppose.’

  ‘But not whose. How old is she?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Over age, thank Christ. If you ever use Mummy’s bed again, I’ll disinherit you. I hope you took precautions.’

  ‘We did,’ mumbled Archie. ‘I’m really sorry. We were going to change the sheets.’

  ‘Think how upset Mummy would have been.’

  ‘We don’t have to tell her, do we?’ Archie’s round face turned pale.

  Thinking he would also have some very fast explaining to do if Monica discovered he hadn’t reached the flat until eight o’clock, Tony agreed that they didn’t.

  ‘But don’t let it happen again. You’ve bloody well got to pass your O-levels. You know how important qualifications are. Now I suppose you expect me to give you breakfast?’

  RIVALS

  8

  Six months later, on the wettest August day for fifty years, Declan O’Hara moved into Penscombe Priory to the feverish excitement of the entire county. It rained so hard that on ‘Cotswold Round-Up’ James Vereker caringly warned his viewers about flooding on the Cotchester-Penscombe road. But perhaps, being Irish, reflected Lizzie Vereker the next morning, the rain made Declan and his family feel more at home.

  Lizzie’s children had gone out to friends for the day; her daily Mrs Makepiece was due later; Ortrud, the nanny who had replaced Birgitta in April, was upstairs no doubt writing about James in her diary. Lizzie had a rare clear day to work. But she was halfway through and very bored with her novel. Outside the downpour had given way to brilliant sunshine and delphinium-blue skies. From her study Lizzie could see the keys on the sycamore already turning coral and yellow leaves flecking the huge weeping willow which blocked her view of the lake. There wouldn’t be many more beautiful days this year, reflected Lizzie. Overcome by restlessness and curiosity, she decided to walk up the valley and drop in on the O’Haras. As a moving-in present she would take them some bantams’ eggs and the bottle of champagne an adoring fan had given James yesterday.

  The trees in the wood that marked the beginning of Rupert’s land were so blackly bowed down with rain that it was like walking through a dripping tunnel. Emerging, Lizzie wandered up the meadows closely cropped by Rupert’s horses. In the o
pposite direction thundered the Frogsmore stream, which ran along the bottom of the valley, hurtling over mossy stones, twisting round fallen logs, shrugging off the caress of hanging forget-me-nots and pink campion, and occasionally disappearing altogether into a cavern of bramble and briar.

  Coming in the other direction was Mrs Makepiece, who worked mornings for the unspeakable Valerie Jones and who was bursting with gossip. The four Pickfords’ vans bearing the O’Haras’ belongings had nearly got stuck on Chalford Hill, she told Lizzie, and Declan’s son – well, the image of Declan, anyway – had been sighted in the village shop, asking for whisky, chocolate biscuits, toilet paper and lightbulbs, and was quite the handsomest young man anyone had seen in Penscombe since Rupert Campbell-Black was a lad.

  ‘Will they be bringing their own staff from London?’ asked Mrs Makepiece wistfully, thinking it would be much more fun working for Mrs O’Hara, who probably paid London prices and wouldn’t slave-drive like Valerie Jones. Lizzie said she didn’t know. Mrs Makepiece was an ace cleaner, a ‘treasure’. Even the exacting Valerie Jones admitted it. Annexing ‘treasures’ was a far worse sin in Gloucestershire than stealing somebody’s husband.

  Lizzie wandered on. Having had no lunch because she was on a diet, she kept stopping to eat blackberries, which didn’t count. Up on the left, dominating the valley, Rupert’s beautiful tawny house dozed in the sunshine. The garden wasn’t as good as it had been when Rupert’s ex-wife Helen had lived there. The beeches she’d planted round the tennis court were nearly eight feet tall now. Rupert should fly a flag when he was in residence, thought Lizzie. One couldn’t help feeling excited when he was at home.