Rivals

by Jilly Cooper

  Knowing both Janey and Beattie Johnson had pages on national newspapers, Cameron suspected an element of professional jealousy.

  ‘What d’you figure I should do about Tab?’ she asked despairingly. ‘Rupert’s planning to have her over every weekend this summer.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Janey soothingly. ‘He’ll get distracted. But actually I think you ought to go back to work. You’re far too bright to hang about all summer brooding about Tab and being Rupert’s concubine.’

  ‘It’s so hard,’ said Cameron. ‘I’ve had plenty of offers, but all from companies in other parts of the country, and I don’t want to leave Rupert. I’ve been offered loads of freelance work too, but nothing that grabs me. I guess you’re right, I must do something.’

  ‘You probably miss the bustle at Corinium, and Tony Baddingham too. I’ve always thought he was very attractive in a dark satanic way.’

  ‘We were together for three years,’ admitted Cameron. ‘He had his moments, but he was a devil.’

  ‘That forked tongue must have made him very good at oral sex,’ said Janey wickedly.

  Cameron laughed.

  Having hardly touched her lunch, she put her knife and fork together. Leaning over, Janey forked up Cameron’s salmon and, wrapping it in a paper napkin, put it in her bag.

  ‘D’you mind if I take it home for my cat, Harold Evans? He’s fourteen tomorrow and he loves salmon as much as he hates London.’

  While Cameron was in London with Janey, Rupert went over to The Priory in an attempt to melt the dangerous froideur that seemed to have developed between him and Declan.

  Declan, however, seemed enchanted to see him. Switching off Brahms’ Fourth, and making a heavily gin-laced jug of Pimm’s – ‘Just the kind of focking English upper-class drink you would like!’ – he took Rupert out into the garden.

  ‘Is that the new puppy’s work?’ said Rupert, noticing a shredded bedroom slipper on the lawn and the flattened flower beds.

  ‘I’m afraid so. He’s been re-christened High Claudius, as he rolled on onspeakable fox’s crap yesterday, and, roshing in, leapt all over Professor Graystock who’d dropped in to drool over Taggie! At least he got rid of the Professor double quick – so he does have his advantages! It’s all right,’ he added hastily, misreading the sudden bootfaced expression on Rupert’s face, ‘he’s a dear little dog – we all love him. Caitlin’s taken him and Gertrude for a walk.’

  He poured the Pimm’s into two pint mugs, then put the jug in the shade under a nearby chestnut tree. It was another glorious afternoon. Grasshoppers scraped like toy violins in the long grass, a marbled white butterfly basked on a cushion of thyme. Through the silver trunks of the beech trees they could just see Rupert’s cornfields turning gold. Even the birds were silent, worn out with feeding their young.

  Declan stretched out. ‘It’s days like this that make that terrible long winter seem worthwhile. D’you know we’ve been here for nearly a year?’

  ‘Here’s to many more,’ said Rupert, noticing how tired Declan was looking again. ‘How’s the book going?’

  ‘All right, except that I’m constantly disturbed by my wife and daughter screaming at each other.’

  ‘Taggie screaming?’ said Rupert in surprise.

  ‘Never Taggie. Maud and Caitlin. Maud’s menopause appears to be coinciding with Caitlin’s adolescence. I’m thinking of calling in the International Peacekeeping Force.’

  ‘I could have done with them this weekend,’ said Rupert, swotting an ant. ‘My children were staying. Tab and Cameron were like weasels at each other’s jugulars. Why can’t women get on with each other? Men never fight.’

  Declan laughed. ‘I’d never have cast Cameron as Mary Poppins.’

  Idly they discussed the franchise. Declan had recruited a very good girl from Yorkshire Television as Head of Children’s Programmes. Then, heavily prompted by Rupert, he confessed he was desperately pushed again for money.

  ‘Have you spent all that thirty-five thousand already?’ said Rupert disapprovingly. ‘You shouldn’t keep sloping off to grope Maud in the Lakes.’

  ‘I know, but I’d been working flat out and she’s so restless. And I’ve just paid a massive tax bill and Patrick’s fare to Australia and Caitlin’s school fees for last term. And I’ve never seen anything like the electricity bill. Talk about electric shock treatment. Poor Tag’s the only breadwinner. She’s over at Monica’s at the moment, filling up her deep freeze.’

  ‘Can’t she shove Tony in as well?’ said Rupert, fishing a piece of cucumber out of his mug. ‘I expect he’ll force the poor darling to taste everything first in case she’s poisoning them.’

  Declan wasn’t listening. His Mini, which was a 1976 model welded together by dog hair, rust and mud, which had only passed its MOT for the last few years as a result of prayer and huge sums of money changing hands, had finally given up the ghost, he told Rupert.

  ‘You can borrow one of my cars for the moment,’ said Rupert. ‘In actual fact, what you need is a massive cash injection. D’you want an advance from the Venturer kitty?’

  ‘We’ll need all of that. I’ve got to earn it. I’ve spent the last week writing a script for a fifty-minute dramatized documentary on Yeats.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Irish poet. The man I’m writing the book about,’ said Declan impatiently.

  ‘Ah,’ said Rupert. Then, regaining the ascendancy, ‘Doesn’t sound like a money-spinner to me.’

  ‘Will be – if it’s good enough. I’ve sold the idea to Channel Four. And the IBA will be in raptures. Lady Gosling’s half-Irish.’

  Lying on his back, listening to the hum of insects and the idle cooing of the wood pigeons, gazing up at Taggie’s bedroom window, Rupert suddenly had a brainwave. ‘If Freddie and I put up some more money, you can afford to have Cameron produce and direct it, so we can keep it in the family.’

  ‘Indeed you will not,’ said Declan mutinously. ‘Cameron and I don’t get on.’

  Rupert turned towards Declan, eyes squinting against the sun: ‘Time you bloody learned. She really thinks you’re great. She just has a communication problem. And it’ll give her something to do. She’s like a sheep dog, she needs work.’

  ‘To stop her getting in your hair?’ snapped Declan.

  Rupert, who hadn’t had any lunch, had now finished all the fruit in his Pimms and was reduced to eating the mint. ‘I’m thinking of Venturer, not myself,’ he said sanctimoniously, as Declan filled up both their mugs. ‘We just don’t want her getting restless and running back to Tony.’

  ‘It’d mean several weeks in Ireland,’ said Declan. ‘We’ll have to go on a recce fairly soon, and once we’ve cast it and fixed up the people to interview, I want to start shooting in early September. Then we’ll need another week at the end of November to do the Coole woods in Autumn.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ll be popping over to Ireland all the time from now on for the Autumn sales, so Cameron won’t suffer too badly from withdrawal symptoms.’

  ‘It’s a terrible gamble,’ said Declan broodingly. ‘She and I never got on at Corinium; why should we get on now?’

  ‘Because Tony won’t be there putting the boot in. I promise you, Cameron really, really admires your work.’

  Declan blushed slightly. ‘Well, she’s got to read the script before committing herself. I’m not having her working on something she doesn’t like one hundred per cent.’

  Cameron rang Declan later that evening, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. ‘I’ve just got back from London and read your script. I just love it. The characters are terrific and all the ideas for interviews are just great. The text reads so beautifully; it’s superb.’

  Declan was utterly disarmed by such uncharacteristic enthusiasm. For any writer, waiting for the first reaction is a nail-biting experience. Ursula, who’d typed the script out, had said she’d loved it, but then she was paid to.

  ‘I’d just adore to do it,�
� went on Cameron, ‘if you really figure I’m the right person?’

  ‘Sure you are,’ said Declan. ‘I’ve just been talking to Jeremy at Channel Four and told him you might be interested. He’s mad about the idea.’

  ‘You look as though you’re floating on Eire,’ said Rupert as Cameron put down the telephone.

  ‘You won’t mind my being away so much?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rupert, taking her in his arms, ‘of course I will, but you’ve got to have your freedom. I did when I was show jumping. It was the one thing that fuelled me.’

  Cameron blushed. ‘Do you swear it was Declan’s idea I should direct it?’

  ‘Would I lie to you?’ said Rupert blandly. ‘He asked me to ask you. He really admires your work. He just has a communication problem.’

  ‘Oh, wow!’ sighed Cameron. ‘I feel like the first woman on the moon.’

  RIVALS

  38

  Deliriously happy to be working again, Cameron threw herself into producing Declan’s programme. Much of her time was spent in London or over at The Priory and she turned one of Rupert’s upstairs bedrooms into a study so she could work there as well. Rupert, who’d been neglecting the yard and his business interests, and still had a full diary as an MP despite the summer recess, was also kept very busy. This suited them both; they continued to argue a lot, but sex at least was miraculous when they met. Even the children’s visits seemed less of a hassle. Mrs Bodkin did all the work, and when Tabitha became unbearable, which was most of the time, instead of rowing with her, Cameron retreated upstairs to work.

  On the franchise front, the IBA had now sifted through everyone’s lengthy applications with a toothcomb and fired off letters to all the consortiums containing supplementary questions about programme plans, management structure, studios and general finance.

  ‘We promised them a cross between Camelot and Utopia,’ said Declan, ‘and now we’ve got to justify it.’

  The long written answer to this letter was almost as crucial in winning the franchise as the original application. Once again, therefore, the Venturer team had to get together to thrash out policy. Meetings at anyone’s house were now considered too risky, as Tony had stepped up his espionage since Cameron had defected.

  ‘I was followed down Cotchester High Street by the most ravishing piece of rough trade this morning,’ said Charles Fairburn petulantly, ‘but I couldn’t work out if it was my lucky day or he was a member of the Baddingham KGB.’

  Rupert, being such a practised adulterer, was therefore deputed to find a meeting-place where they wouldn’t be found out. He chose a seedy room over a nightclub in a back street in Cheltenham.

  ‘If this is where you bring your mistresses,’ grumbled Georgie Baines when he arrived for the first meeting, ‘I can see why they get fed up.’

  Night after night, therefore, through the end of July and a long hot August, Declan, Freddie, Bas, Rupert, Cameron, Lord Smith, Harold White, and the Corinium Moles – when they could get away – met up to hammer out the answers. Charles Fairburn still turned up every time in a different disguise, which made everyone giggle. They needed to. Declan, deadly serious now, insisted everyone drank only Perrier until the meeting was over. They were nearly halfway through their long ordeal in the franchise fight and nervous tension was mounting.

  At least they were spared the Bishop, who was spending a month in the Holy Land, and Professor Graystock, who was in Greece researching a book. But they missed Dame Enid, who’d gone on a walking tour in Wales with a woman friend, and, after 12th August, when he pushed off to Scotland to shoot, they missed the inanities of the Lord-Lieutenant. They’d all grown very fond of Henry. Janey Lloyd-Foxe, hampered by two children and a book to finish, seldom showed up. Billy was in Australia making a film about rugger for the BBC.

  For Wesley Emerson, August was a wicket month. He took 8 for 42 against the Australians in the Leeds Test. Venturer basked in his reflected glory.

  The letter with the answers to the supplementary questions was dispatched to the IBA at the beginning of September, by which time the franchise wives were getting very fed up. The long summer holidays were slowly grinding to a halt. The smell of moulding leaves and bonfires, the sight of huge red suns and dewy cobwebs hanging on the fences, reminded them with a pang that summer had already had its run.

  Sarah Stratton, for example, not only had Paul hanging round at home, out of work and grumpily demoralized, but also his ghastly daughters who never stopped implying that Daddy would be Prime Minister now if he had stayed with Mummy, and that by going out to work Sarah was neglecting him. Sarah and James’s afternoon programme was off the air for the summer. Paul and the girls watched the local news and knew that Sarah finished at seven, or even six-thirty on ‘Crossroads’ days. The studio was only twenty minutes from home. All were waiting bootfaced to start supper if she weren’t home by eight.

  Valerie Jones was increasingly irritated that Freddie seemed to be spending so much time on the stupid franchise. Completely off gardening since James had failed to immortalize her opening, Valerie had dragged Wayne and Sharon off to a villa in Portugal for a month. She’d all but persuaded Taggie to join them, and to do the cooking, until that fiendish Rupert talked her out of it, so instead they got a local slut called Conceptiona, who got so terribly on Fred-Fred’s nerves (he hated foreign food anyway) that he buzzed off back to Gloucestershire saying he had too much on. As he’d been wandering round the villa with nothing on at all, in order to get a suntan (no doubt Rupert’s fiendish influence again) this seemed very illogical.

  Monica Baddingham also had, as Cameron would have said, a somewhat ‘stressful’ summer. There had been no discussion between her and Tony about Cameron’s defection, beyond the fact that Corinium had lost a megastar and an essential weapon in the franchise battle. Privately Monica realized Tony was utterly devastated. Being humane and kindly, she felt very sorry for him, in the same way as she did for her poor distressed gentlefolk, her battered wives, her stray dogs and everyone else who was the recipient of her inexhaustible charity.

  It was tragic that Tony couldn’t level with her. Comforting him, they might have grown closer. But at least she listened patiently to his diatribes against Declan and Rupert, and stoically accepted that he would want to sleep with her more than once a week until he found a new mistress.

  Much more worrying was that Archie, her favourite child, now seventeen and not due to take his A-levels until next year, was still enjoying a most unsuitable fling with the ghastly Tracey Makepiece, whom he’d met at the O’Hara New Year’s Eve party. Both Monica and Tony were terrified Archie would make her pregnant and be forced into an early marriage; or, because the Makepieces didn’t believe in abortion or adoption, the baby Baddingham would be taken into the bosom of the Makepiece family and be a drain on Archie’s quite insufficient pocket money for the rest of his life.

  ‘Why the hell can’t you find a girl of your own class?’ roared Tony, forbidding Archie to see her any more. Archie had obviously taken no notice. One morning in early August, putting on Archie’s Barbour by mistake, Monica found a letter in Tracey’s loopy handwriting: ‘I will love you dearest, until all the seas run dry.’ Archie had promptly been shunted off to Tuscany for three weeks.

  Most despondent of all the wives, however, was Maud. No one had fallen in love with her for ages, and Declan, having been totally obsessed with the franchise, and then his Yeats programme, was now totally obsessed with both. Not wanting to leave Maud when she was so depressed, apprehensive about going to Ireland with Cameron, Declan tried to persuade Maud to make a return to acting and play Yeats’s great love, Maud Gonne, in the programme, so she could come with them. Maud, terrified of failure, turned him down flatly and then detested herself for doing so. It was as though she was deliberately pushing him into an affair with Cameron.

  Finally, Caitlin had been home most of the summer, full of teenage moodiness, criticizing everything Maud did, particularly her clothes, which Ca
itlin claimed were so out of date they should be called ‘a first world wardrobe’. Maud was not amused; she’d always prided herself on being able to go to a party in a pair of Declan’s pyjamas, with a jewelled comb in her hair, and look marvellous.

  One morning towards the end of August Maud read a piece in the Daily Mail about Princess Michael entering a new golden age of maturity and confidence. She’s the same age as me, thought Maud broodily, and I’m ten years younger than Joan Collins, and look how great she looks. Why am I riddled with self-doubt and about as confident as a mongrel at Crufts?

  Having borrowed a hundred pounds and her new violet dress off Taggie, she decided to ignore Declan’s bank balance as well and go into Cotchester and buy some new clothes. As she got ready, Caitlin wandered into her bedroom.

  Even in the space of the holidays she seemed to have shot up several inches, and was as tall as Maud now. Her brace was off her teeth, she’d grown her hair and peroxided it canary yellow. Chronic sulkiness was the only thing that stopped her being incredibly pretty.

  Changing her parting slightly, Maud noticed three grey hairs and tugged them out in horror.

  ‘You’d quadruple the men after you if you had short hair or used Sun-In or a bit of gel,’ said Caitlin; ‘and that’s Taggie’s dress you’re wearing.’

  ‘When I was your age,’ countered Maud, ‘I had hundreds of boys after me. I can’t think why you don’t.’

  ‘I’m choosey, that’s why. Why don’t you have your face lifted?’

  Maud gazed at her reflection. Perhaps she ought to, but unable to face a filling at the dentist, she’d never cope with the pain. Anyway she’d rather have her spirits lifted. Her body looked OK still, but crêped when it was squeezed, which didn’t seem very often these days. I’m over the hill, she thought with a shiver, as she started to put on her make-up. Declan will go off to Ireland – and with Cameron Cook.

  ‘Eyeliner goes on much better if you pull your eyelids out,’ said Caitlin, ‘and you’re not going to wear those ghastly slingbacks?’