Rivals

by Jilly Cooper

  It was like a spark from the fire landing in a box of matches. Maud went berserk.

  ‘All he thinks about is his fucking franchise,’ she screamed, her face a shuddering grotesque coloured pulp of rage and misery, and, turning on her flowers, she started to tear them apart, pulling off the heads and then the petals and throwing them on the floor.

  ‘Shouldn’t we slap her face?’ said Cameron longingly.

  ‘Stop it, Maud,’ said Monica angrily. ‘That’s wanton and destructive.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ screamed Maud, ripping apart poor Taggie’s yellow roses.

  In despair, Taggie went out into the passage and ran slap into Rupert, who was no doubt about to add his own particularly vicious brand of invective. Behind him members of the cast and the Corinium television crew were peering curiously out of doors and round corners.

  ‘Where is she?’ said Rupert grimly.

  ‘Oh, please. They’re all shouting at her. They don’t realize how frightened she is.’

  Rupert paused, weighing up the options, then, like a wand fleetingly restoring her happiness, he touched Taggie’s cheek with his finger: ‘Go and get a large brandy, angel. I’ll sort her out. Shut up the lot of you,’ he yelled, as he went into the dressing-room.

  ‘We’ll have to play the understudy,’ said Barton despairingly, ‘even though she’s fifteen stone and about to draw her pension.’

  The floor was entirely carpeted with petals now.

  ‘She won’t go on,’ said Cameron contemptuously.

  ‘I’m not surprised with you lot yelling at her,’ said Rupert. ‘Get out, everyone.’ And he slammed the door on them.

  Rupert sat down on the bed and pulling Maud into his arms, gently stroking the silken shoulders, letting her cry, until gradually the sobbing and shuddering ceased.

  ‘There,’ said Rupert encouragingly. ‘There’s a brave girl.’

  ‘He wanted me to go to Ireland with them and play Maud Gonne,’ said Maud in a choked voice.

  ‘I know.’ Rupert went on stroking her.

  ‘I wanted to do it so badly, but I funked it. I didn’t want to fail again, particularly in front of Cameron. I’m sure she’s having an affair with Declan. I kept imagining them meeting secretly after a day’s shooting, and discussing how terrible I’d been.’

  ‘You’re a dick,’ said Rupert gently.

  ‘Declan fell in love with me the first time he saw me acting. I wanted him to fall in love with me all over again tonight.’

  ‘Declan adores you. He’s never looked at anyone else.’

  ‘Then why isn’t he here?’ Maud’s voice grew shrill again. For a second Rupert thought he’d lost her.

  ‘He went to see Dermot MacBride.’

  ‘The Dermot MacBride?’

  Rupert nodded. ‘He’s written a new play. Declan felt if Venturer could tell the IBA we’d bought an option, it would really give us the edge.’

  Maud quivered with rage. ‘I loathe the franchise,’ she said tonelessly.

  ‘Declan’s only obsessed with it because he sees it as the one way he’ll get you out of your financial mess. You don’t want to sell The Priory, do you?’

  Maud shook her head violently: ‘Could it come to that?’

  ‘It almost has,’ said Rupert.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘I don’t want to see anyone,’ said Maud hysterically.

  Rupert wrapped the towel round her again. But it was only Taggie with an enormous brandy for Maud and an equally huge whisky for Rupert.

  ‘Thanks, sweetheart.’ He took them from her. ‘Now beat it.’

  Maud took such a huge gulp that she choked. Rupert didn’t tell her he suspected Declan had deliberately missed the plane because his nerve had failed and he couldn’t bear seeing Maud humiliated. Nor did he say that the press were howling like jackals outside and that, if she didn’t go on, the publicity, with both her and Declan letting everyone down, would be devastating for Venturer.

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ he said idly. ‘I heard you practising at The Priory so often. I wanted to hear it for real, and see the others make absolute tits of themselves by comparison. Look, you’ve had a shock, why not get back into your jersey and jeans and finish that brandy.’

  There was a long, long pause.

  ‘Better not,’ said Maud shakily, putting down her glass, ‘or I’ll start forgetting my words. I’d do better with a drop of oil to get me through all those skylarking bits.’

  Rupert said nothing, but, reaching for the huge blue tin of cleansing cream, he took off the lid, gouged out a white blob and very slowly began to smear it over Maud’s face, blurring away the ravages.

  ‘How did you know to use that?’

  ‘I’ve watched enough actresses take their make-up off in my time.’

  ‘Most of mine’s come off on you,’ said Maud, suddenly contrite, as she noticed his hopelessly streaked evening shirt.

  ‘Treat it as war paint,’ said Rupert. ‘Later I’ll be doing battle with Tony.’

  Docile as a child, Maud let him remove all the smeared make-up: ‘You won’t leave me?’

  ‘I’ll stay with you the entire evening, but I have to admit making up your face is beyond even my skills.’

  Outside, Barton looked at his watch for the hundredth time. It was ten past seven. The press were howling for a decision. The understudy was already changed. If only he could make an announcement that the performance was starting late at least it would keep the audience happy.

  ‘If she weren’t going on,’ said Cameron, ‘Rupert would have come and told us.’

  ‘He was always good at boxing difficult horses,’ said Bas, who had changed into his stage clothes and was now raring to go in and comfort Maud.

  As her door opened, everyone surged forward. Coming out, Rupert put a finger to his lips, then made a thumbs up sign: ‘Has anyone got any eyedrops?’

  ‘Mine are by appointment to the Queen Mother,’ said Monica, diving into her dressing-room to get them. ‘They jolly well make your eyes sparkle.’

  RIVALS

  46

  Out in the foyer, Tony was now welcoming the Mayor and Mayoress and the Reverend Fergus Penney from the IBA, who was visiting Cotchester for the performance.

  ‘I have to warn you there may be hold-ups,’ purred Tony happily. ‘Declan O’Hara, who usually misses the boat, has missed the plane this time and failed to turn up on the night of his poor wife’s famous comeback. She’s gone to pieces and is refusing to go on, so the understudy is waiting in the wings. I’m afraid one really can’t rely on Venturer,’ he added to Fergus Penney, ‘but at least we can all pass the time pleasantly enough having a glass of champagne.’

  Steering them through a door marked Private, he found his latest acquisition wearing a new black and gold dress to complement her newly streaked hair and getting stuck into the Bollinger.

  ‘Can I introduce Lizzie Vereker,’ said Tony warmly. ‘I told you she and James are fronting our new series to discourage the spread of AIDS: “How to Stay Married”, didn’t I, Fergus?’ he added to the Prebendary, who was now licking his thin lips at the sight of Lizzie’s curves.

  ‘Norman and I could give you a few tips on that,’ said the Mayoress. ‘We’re celebrating our forty-fifth next week.’

  ‘You must come on Lizzie’s programme then,’ said Tony, raising his glass. ‘Cotchester’s most distinguished married couple.’

  I can’t bear it, thought Lizzie, allowing her glass to be filled up. In this dress she felt as though she’d been gift-wrapped at Harrods. She longed to get out into the foyer and see if Freddie had arrived. Because of James’s new uxoriousness and a general tightening up of security, she and Freddie had only managed to talk on the telephone this week.

  Outside in the auditorium Sarah Stratton was spinning out the signing of autographs. Anything not to be trapped in the middle of the second row with Paul and thus not able to accost James as he came past. James, absolutely livid at being
mistaken for the manager by some enraged theatregoer whose seats had been double-booked, was now trying to explain the extremely complicated plot of The Merry Widow to the viewers.

  The Bishop, mingling with his flock and pressing the flesh, misconstrued Freddie’s abstractedness as animosity and wondered darkly whether Rupert had passed on his remarks about Freddie being a rough diamond.

  As the five-minute bell went, Tony glanced at his watch. Seven thirty-five. Bugger, they were hardly going to be late at all. At least they could rely on the understudy to be perfectly awful.

  ‘I think we’d better find our seats,’ he said.

  Charles, wearing pantaloons so tight he felt he was standing inches above the ground, peered through a chink in the thick Prussian-blue velvet curtains, as he and Monica and the chorus, all in evening dress, waited in the wings to go on.

  ‘It’s absolutely packed,’ he reported in a hollow voice. ‘People are standing at the back and in the side aisles. The première of “The Messiah” in Dublin was such a sell-out that the men were told to leave off their swords. Pity that people weren’t frisked at the door today. I bet your husband’s carrying a long knife, Monica dear. No, it’s no use looking reproving, he’s given me the bullet, I can say what I like,’ and, turning, he stuck a rather green tongue out through the curtains as Tony came in.

  Taggie helped Maud pile up her hair with two diamanté combs and zipped her into her slinky black ball dress. Then, leaving Rupert and Bas to do up her jewellery, she slipped into her seat. There were only two empty seats between her and Cameron, but they should have been inhabited by Rupert and Declan, so the gap seemed wider than the Atlantic. Judging by Cameron’s set profile it was obvious that she was seething because Rupert wasn’t beside her, particularly as a smirking Tony had just rolled up with the Mayor and was sitting directly behind them.

  Cameron was seething even more that, after not seeing her for three months, Tony should catch her when she’d only had a few minutes to change and hadn’t showered or washed her hair. She was wearing the smoking jacket which Taggie’d tipped dessert over last year and which didn’t evoke very happy memories either. It definitely needed clean hair and very dramatic make-up to carry it off. She felt horribly butch. Dame Enid, who was conducting the orchestra in a dinner jacket, had been giving her some very hot looks, but at least she didn’t look as awful as Taggie, who must have lost a stone and was wearing a dreadful brown dress that was just the wrong length and made her look completely flat-chested.

  There was a gap on Taggie’s left too. Where the hell was Caitlin? wondered Taggie. She’d arrived by taxi half an hour ago and, despite promising to behave, had promptly disappeared.

  All round, Taggie could hear the roar and sizzle of anticipation as the lights went out and the orchestra started. The cameramen, who’d been forced into dinner jackets by Tony, took up their positions behind their cameras, the soundmen made a final check of the microphones, as Caitlin, apologizing profusely, clambered along an irritated row of people and collapsed panting by Taggie’s side.

  ‘Do up the buttons of your shirt,’ said Taggie furiously. In the row behind, from the other side, having kicked the Mayoress in the varicose veins and trodden on the Prebendary’s bunions, the Hon Archie, the bow of his black tie under his left ear, collapsed panting beside a bootfaced Tony.

  Next moment Tony’s bootfaced expression turned to one of apoplexy: ‘How dare you wear a made-up tie?’ he hissed, as the Prussian-blue velvet curtains creaked back on the Pontevedrian Embassy in Paris. The Ambassador was giving a ball, and the guest of honour about to arrive was the Merry Widow.

  After a rousing opening number by the chorus, it was Monica’s and Charles’s turn. Monica, playing the ambassador’s beautiful ex-actress wife, couldn’t act for toffee. But by tackling the part with the same breezy competence with which she ran charity committees or bathed labradors, she gave the rest of the cast a much-needed confidence. And Charles looked so sweet in his tight pantaloons, swearing eternal and extremely camp devotion, that it was rather like a skittish Billy Bunter getting off with the head girl.

  ‘My marriage is sacred to me,’ warbled Monica, to the smirks of the audience, who all knew she was married to Tony.

  ‘If marriage is sacred to you,’ sang back Charles, lasciviously stroking her bare arm, ‘there’s not very much I can do,’ to even more smirks from the audience, who nearly all knew Charles was gay. And they liked it even better when his moustache fell off and he nearly split his pantaloons bending over to pick it up.

  ‘What a lot of gold fillings Monica’s got,’ whispered Caitlin to Taggie, ‘and, waving that baton, Dame Enid looks as though she’s playing Stickie with Gertrude. When’s Mother Courage coming on?’

  ‘Any minute,’ said Taggie, who was praying.

  Maud, clinging to both Bas’s and Rupert’s hands, stood shivering like a whippet in the wings. Although her black velvet dress was Turn-of-the-Century in fashion, Basil, for some reason, was dressed as a Regency buck. The longest legs in Gloucestershire were set off by gleaming black boots and pantaloons, the cut of his slate-blue coat would have had Beau Brummel in raptures and his sleek black hair had been coaxed forward into Byronic curls. He looked the perfect Georgette Heyer hero.

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ he whispered to Maud.

  ‘So do you,’ said Maud, whose teeth were chattering loud enough to provide the castanets in the orchestra.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ said Rupert, patting her shoulder.

  And suddenly she was. There was no more need of Rupert’s presence; she was really keen to get on stage. She must gather the audience into the play and say every line exactly right. She was only nervous because she was a young provincial widow, a little shy but heartbreakingly beautiful, about to be launched on Parisian society.

  There was a terrific roll of drums, a tantivy of horns, and she glided into the glittering ballroom, standing deliberately under the huge chandelier so all her jewels sparked and the audience could take in the beauty of her body in the tight black dress, and her pallor which only set off her red lips and her brilliant red hair.

  ‘Gentlemen no more,’ sang Maud, pianissimo.

  ‘I’ve never seen the Spring going to a ball before,’ sang a swooning French aristocrat, played by the bank manager of Lloyds, Cotchester. ‘You throw us into ecstasies, lovely lady.’

  And for once the words were believable. Now Maud was singing again, the exquisite voice hitting F sharp as clear as a bell.

  ‘Shit,’ murmured Caitlin. ‘She’s fucking good.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ breathed Taggie. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  I can’t bear it, thought Cameron. She’d dismissed Maud as a sluttish, middle-aged parasite with unfashionably long hair, who dressed like a tramp, and here she was bringing the entire audience to their feet at the end of her first number.

  Bas’s entrance stepped up the excitement even more. He had a glorious, slightly husky voice and added just the right touch of rakish Latin glamour.

  ‘Shit,’ said Caitlin again. ‘Lucky Mummy. He’s dead attractive.’

  The sexual tension between him and Maud was incredible, particularly when offset by Monica and Charles, who, stepping up the camping, got more and more like Dignity and Impudence. Having dispatched all the competition, Bas was left alone on the stage with Maud at the end of the first act.

  ‘Music so sweet,’ he crooned softly, dancing round and round her, tempting her into his arms, ‘speaks to the heart and the feet.’ And finally, triumphantly, he swept her into a waltz.

  Elegant, incredibly romantic, they revolved under the chandelier until the curtain came down to a deafening roar of applause and a fusillade of bravoes.

  After the first act, even though there was the Vilja song and several big numbers to come, Maud felt nothing but relief. It didn’t matter that Declan hadn’t turned up. She even sent Rupert back to his seat. She felt totally insulated. She’d been so petrified, and concentrated
so hard on getting that first act perfect, that now she felt on automatic pilot. All trace of tears had gone. And although Charles almost stole the show when he bent down to retrieve his moustache yet again and his trousers split to reveal pink boxer shorts covered in pale-blue teddy bears, it was Maud’s night. When the final curtain came down she was cheered to the rooftops, taking curtain call after curtain call, as the whole audience, even Tony, were on their feet, yelling and clapping like promenaders.

  Rupert turned to Taggie. ‘We did it,’ he said triumphantly.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You did it.’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said Basil, as he and Maud took their final bows.

  ‘You were better than anyone could have dreamed,’ said Barton Sinclair, pale beside the made-up actors, as he kissed Maud’s hand and, to roars of applause handed her a huge bouquet of flowers that appeared through the curtains.

  ‘I saw The Merry Widow in Paris,’ said Valerie Jones petulantly to Professor Graystock. ‘It was quite a different opera. But then it was performed by professionals.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call Die Lustige Witwe opera,’ said the Professor, showing off that he knew the German title, ‘but I did think Maud O’Hara was marvellously in voice.’

  ‘I’d like to meet Maud O’Hara,’ said the Prebendary. ‘She seems an interesting person.’

  ‘You shall in a minute,’ said Tony cosily.

  Maud rushed back to her dressing-room to change out of her gold last-act dress into a blue silk suit she’d bought for the occasion. After that it was bedlam, people pouring in and out, hugging, kissing and congratulating her. The champagne went in a flash. The press bombarded her with questions, but she was not to be drawn on the subject of Declan. ‘My husband’s in Ireland on business,’ she said firmly. ‘He’ll be here later.’

  At the party everyone kept coming up and saying how marvellous she’d been, but she still felt curiously detached, as though nothing could dent her now.