Rivals

27

Waking first, Cameron reached out and immediately realized she wasn’t with Tony. Rupert had the most enormous erection, so like a Cruise missile that Cameron half expected to see lots of Greenham women camped round the bed looking disapproving and waving CND banners. Getting up, she drew back the curtain an inch. Rupert was certainly the best-looking man she’d ever been to bed with, and, despite her sniping, the best lay. Once she’d let him take over last night, everything had been perfect. She knew too that, in the space of fourteen hours, she was a different person. She’d been dependent on Tony for security but never happiness. For the first time in her life, she was in love and it terrified her.

The ring of the telephone woke Rupert up. It was Tony, all smarm, calling from his car, so the line wasn’t very good. This was a good thing as Rupert started kissing Cameron all over in the middle, and so distracted her she couldn’t remember anything practical, like what time the awards were or when she flew in tomorrow, or concentrate on the witty remarks Tony had made to the Princess.

‘It’s Tony,’ she wrote frantically on the telephone message pad.

‘So?’ wrote Rupert.

‘I’m so sorry,’ gasped Cameron. ‘I was working very late on the application.’

‘How’s it shaping?’

‘Very well,’ shrieked Cameron, as Rupert, grinning broadly, lunged Cruise into her. ‘Look, I’ve got to go, I’m off to Toledo. I’ll ring you before I leave tomorrow morning. You’re insupportable,’ she howled at Rupert, as she slammed down the telephone.

‘How was the dinner party?’

Cameron grimaced. ‘Said he only accepted because he felt the Duke needed his support and it was always a bit nerve-racking entertaining royalty.’

Rupert had to bury his face in her neck to stop himself laughing.

Afterwards he wanted to go back to sleep, but Cameron, who felt one shouldn’t waste a minute in a foreign country, made the mistake of dragging him off to Toledo.

‘You are now entering the Imperial capital,’ read a large sign as they drove through the ancient city gates.

‘I can think of things I’d much rather enter,’ said Rupert broodily.

‘Hardly Cyril Smith country,’ he went on, as the official car rumbled cautiously up incredibly narrow streets, where the flowers in the window boxes on either side seemed to bend over to kiss each other beneath a thin blue strip of sky.

Cameron’s hopes that Rupert might like the cathedral were soon dashed. He whizzed past the ravishing stained-glass windows, the carved pillars and the breathtaking pictures as though he was riding against the clock. A Velasquez Borgia reminded him of Tony. After gazing at a Rubens Madonna and Child for three seconds, he said they both should be dispatched to Weightwatchers. The El Grecos finished him off altogether because they all reminded him of his ex-wife’s husband, Malise Gordon.

Just inside the entrance to the cathedral was a gift shop selling not only religious relics and postcards, but also flick knives, swords, guns, thumbscrews and racks. Was this symbolic of the torture Rupert was going to put her through? wondered Cameron. To cheer him up, she insisted they stop for Margueritas at a nearby bar. Rupert pronounced them absolutely disgusting: neat salt water with added salt water. They’ll all be at the first Venturer lunch on Salisbury Plain, he thought sourly, getting drunk and enjoying themselves. He wished he were there too.

As they were leaving Toledo, Cameron suddenly thought wistfully of Patrick and how much he would have enjoyed wandering round the city and the cathedral.

‘Can we just drive up to the top and look back?’ she asked the chauffeur.

The view took her breath away. The whole of Toledo sprawled out on the hillside, little houses, palaces, churches, bleached and baked over the centuries by the burning sun to the palest terracottas, roans, corals and ochres, with the occasional black-green cypress as an exclamation mark. On the right flowed the Tagus, like dark-green glass, going into a flurry of foaming water as it dropped down a level, then becoming absolutely still again, as though someone had added gelatine.

‘Christ, I’d like to bring a film crew here,’ said Cameron. Then she looked at Rupert’s face, which was as still and cold as the dark-green water.

I’ve lost him, she thought despairingly. I should have let him sleep.

But, as they were driving back to Madrid, his hand along the back of the seat suddenly touched her hair. It was as though he’d sawn through the ropes and dragged her off the railroad track as the express thundered towards her.

She melted towards him. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t you like culture?’

‘Not a lot. It’s already happened, and I hate being trapped. The first time Helen and I stayed in Madrid, she went to Toledo by herself and raved on and on and on about it. I even remember her making Malise blush when she told him he was pure El Greco. She was crazy about sightseeing. I’m afraid the things I disliked in her I don’t like any better in other people.’

‘But you can’t expect people always to do what you want.’

‘I don’t, but if they want to do something, I’d rather they went off and did it alone, and then not gas about it afterwards.’

‘What were you doing all the time she was sightseeing?’

‘I was show-jumping,’ said Rupert.

When they got back to the room, they made love again, with less energy but more tenderness.

‘Can I get down?’ said Cameron finally as she straddled him.

‘You are able to get down,’ said Rupert, quoting his old nanny, ‘but whether you may is another matter.’

Cameron caressed his cheek. ‘Are you coming with me tonight?’

Rupert shook his head. ‘Not safe. There’ll be too many press.’

Despite no sleep, Cameron looked so seductive in her new kingfisher-blue backless that Rupert nearly dragged her back to bed again.

‘Uh, uh.’ Cameron skipped out of the way. ‘I’ll stagger onto the podium like John Wayne as it is. I hope I don’t fall asleep in the speeches.’

As soon as she walked into the Reception she realized that it was a very good thing she’d come by herself. There was Ivor Hicks, Corinium’s corporate development controller, chatting up a tough-looking Spanish woman. She also recognized people from Granada and TVS, and one of Robert Maxwell’s henchmen.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she whispered to Ivor.

‘Tony’s after a stake in Spanish television,’ said Ivor. ‘The Government here’s creating three new channels. Tony wants twenty-five per cent of one of them. Maxwell, Granada and TVS are after the same thing.’

Cameron sighed. ‘That means less money for programmes.’

‘But more security for Tony, in case he loses the franchise,’ said Ivor. ‘Diversification is the name of the game.’

Rupert gave Cameron half an hour. Then, seeing her going into dinner on television, he went systematically through her Filofax, dictating her future appointments into his tape recorder — and a lot of Tony’s that she’d listed. Then he opened her briefcase, and removed the Corinium application. It was very bulky, like smuggling in Lady Chatterley’s Lover when he was at Prep School.

At first the pretty girl on the reception desk told Rupert the office was closed and there was no way the application could be photostated. But Spanish guests at the hotel seldom had such blond hair, or such blue eyes, or such good teeth, or waved so many thousands and thousands of pesetas in front of her. She would see what she could do, she said. She’d have to secrete the application into the office, it might take a little time, as the manager was about. She’d ring Rupert’s room as soon as it was done. Sweating, he went back upstairs and paced up and down drinking whisky. On television the awards were well underway. Stars were tottering up on to the platform wiping their eyes and thanking every member of the crew, and every madre and padre for the help they had given. What if Cameron had been on already and, overcome with lust, was belting back to him?

Going downstairs again, he met the receptionist, very flustered, but with the completed copy. It was only when he got back to his room that he realized the silly cow had put it back out of order; the sections on ‘Master Dog’ and ‘Dorothy Dove’ didn’t follow on and James Vereker’s afternoon programme was in the middle of Engineering specifications. It was a long and laborious task to get them in the right order, and even then Rupert wasn’t sure he’d done it right. For the third time he rushed down to get the various chapters stapled together.

He was just getting back into the lift when he saw Cameron coming through the revolving door. Pressing the button, he creaked up to the seventh floor, rushed along to her room, which he’d rashly left open because he didn’t have a key and double-locked it on the inside.

With trembling hands he shoved the original back in her briefcase, hoping it was the right way up, snapped the clasp and shoved the copied pages inside his jacket under his arm. The next minute there was a tantivy on the door.

‘Rupert, open up,’ said Cameron.

Pretending to rub the sleep out of his eyes, he opened the door. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t want to be disturbed by maids replacing chocolates and turning down beds. How was it?’

‘Scary,’ said Cameron. ‘I’ll never, never be mean to any front-of-camera people again. Wasn’t it awful when I dried?’

‘You were sweet,’ lied Rupert, ‘and they were all so touched you tried to speak Spanish.’

Fortunately Cameron was a bit pissed. ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked.

‘I wasn’t hungry,’ said Rupert, edging towards the door. ‘In fact I’ve got a bloody awful headache.’

‘I’ve got some Panadol,’ said Cameron, going to her briefcase.

‘I’ve got something even stronger next door,’ said Rupert hastily. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Back in his suite, he nearly died. He’d never had nerves like this in the old days when he was show jumping, and screwing everyone else’s wives. With shaking, sweating hands, he stuffed the photostated application in the secret compartment of his briefcase.

Cameron had kicked off her shoes and was lying on the bed drinking white wine when he got back.

‘Good thing you didn’t come,’ she said. ‘There were so many people who’d have recognized you. I picked up a Sunday Times.’

‘Thanks.’

Rupert turned immediately to the sports page, she noticed, then the smile was wiped off his face.

‘Fucking hell!’ He turned to the front page.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Riots after both semi-finals of the FA Cup,’ he howled. ‘Petrol bombs thrown at the police, two policemen stabbed, cars overturned and burnt, shop windows smashed, twenty people taken to hospital, forty-five arrests. Fucking, fucking hell! I play hookey for one weekend and this happens.’

In a second he was on to Gerald in London.

‘I’ve been trying to get you since yesterday, Minister.’

There were obviously other people in the room or Gerald would never have been so formal.

‘Is it very serious?’

‘Yes — four people are still in intensive care.’

‘I’ll fly back tonight.’

‘I’m sorry, Minister. After all your hard work, it’s a most tragic setback.’

By one o’clock, Rupert managed to get on to a private jet, arranged by the British Ambassador. He seemed to have forgotten Cameron’s existence until he was leaving.

‘I’m sorry to walk out on you, angel. I’m just so pissed off. I was so certain I’d pegged the violence.’ He took her face in his hands. ‘Look, it’s been great. I won’t ring you in case I get Tony, but promise to ring me. Here’s Gerald’s number; he’ll know where to find me.’

And he was gone.

It’s a beginning, thought Cameron, hanging over the balcony to see if she could catch a glimpse of him getting into his car. It was still warm. Breathing in the scent of the lemon trees rising from the little garden, she had a sudden vision of Rupert’s beautiful house in Gloucestershire and all that wonderful sweep of land, and decided the only status symbol she really wanted was a Cartier wedding-ring with R C-B and CC engraved inside.