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 Caitlin 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?’

‘Better than your revolting clodhoppers,’ said Maud furiously. ‘It’s like sharing a house with a carthorse. And what are you going to do with yourself all day?’

‘I’m going to spend the morning dyeing my hair,’ said Caitlin.

Cotchester was full of tourists, drifting aimlessly down the High Street, photographing the cathedral and the ancient houses, and the statue of Charles I. By contrast, Monica Baddingham, striding purposefully through the crowds, was like a powerboat chugging through a flotilla of yachts on a windless day. She detested shopping — such a time-consuming activity. But she needed batteries for her Walkman and there was a new recording of Don Giovanni on order which, maddeningly, hadn’t arrived, and she had to pick up some scores of The Merry Widow.

Every year the West Cotchester Hunt put on a play which was performed to large noisy audiences in November. This year they had decided to be slightly more ambitious and join forces with Cotchester Operatic Society to put on The Merry Widow.

Monica had already been appropriately cast as Valencienne, a virtuous wife. Charles Fairburn had been inappropriately cast as her randy admirer Camille. Bas Baddingham was still dickering over whether to play the male lead, Count Danilo, but as yet the director, Barton Sinclair — ex-Covent Garden, no less — was still searching for someone to play Hanna, the Merry Widow. He was holding auditions in Cotchester Town Hall that very day, but was deeply pessimistic that anyone would be beautiful or stylish enough, or have a sufficiently good voice. Luck, however, was on Barton Sinclair’s side. Outside the Bar Sinister Monica bumped into Maud.

‘How jolly nice,’ said Monica in her raucous voice as she kissed Maud. ‘I’ve been hoping I’d run into you for ages. I wanted to say how wonderful Taggie’s been. Completely saved my life cooking for all the hordes this summer. You must be so proud of her.’

Maud said, yes, she supposed she was.

‘But she’s getting too thin,’ went on Monica. ‘She used to be so round, soft and smiling. I hope she’s not taking on too much. You, on the other hand, look splendid. How’s Declan?’

‘Oh, obsessed with the wretched franchise,’ said Maud fretfully.

‘Isn’t it a ghastly bore?’ sighed Monica. ‘Tony can’t think of anything else. But I don’t see why, just because our husbands are on different sides, we can’t be friends.’

It was very hot in Cotchester High Street. The cool garlicscented gloom of the Bar Sinister beckoned.

‘Nor do I,’ said Maud. ‘Why don’t we go in and have lunch?’

‘What a good idea,’ said Monica in excitement. ‘Ploughman’s lunch, and half a pint of cider.’

Maud’s aims were slightly more ambitious, and they were soon sitting down with Muscadet and crespolini.

‘Oh, look, there’s James Vereker and Sarah Stratton,’ said Monica. ‘What’s Declan doing at the moment?’

‘He’s off to Ireland with Cameron Cook,’ said Maud.

‘Oh.’ Monica’s forkful of crespolini stopped on the way to her mouth. ‘But I thought. .’

‘. . she was living with Rupert. Yes, she is, but she’s making a film with Declan in Ireland.’

Her tongue loosened by a third glass, Maud told Monica about Declan’s trying to persuade her to play Maud Gonne, and how her nerve had failed. ‘I couldn’t face Cameron screaming at me when I didn’t come up to scratch,’ she confessed. ‘Her sarcasm could strip furniture, and I’ve always found it difficult to act in front of Declan.’

Monica, at this point, became very thoughtful. ‘But you would like to go back?’

‘Oh yes, but at the moment I’ve got about as much self-confidence as a leveret at a coursing meeting.’

Monica fished in her shopping bag and brought out one of the scores of The Merry Widow. On the cover was a painting of a beautiful woman, with hair swept up under a big pink hat and a waist, in its swirling cyclamen-pink dress, as slender as her neck. She was raising a glass of champagne in one long purple-gloved hand. Four handsome men with black twirling moustaches were raising their glasses to her in admiring salute.

It was Maud’s perfect fantasy. What did gel and Sun-In matter to that woman?

‘Why don’t you start with something less ambitious than Maud Gonne?’ said Monica. ‘We’re desperate for someone to play the Merry Widow.’

‘I couldn’t,’ faltered Maud. ‘It’s a very demanding part.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Monica briskly. ‘You’d waltz it.’

‘What are my two favourite women doing lunching at my restaurant without telling me?’ said a voice.

It was Bas, absolutely black from a fortnight’s polo in America.

‘Bas,’ said Monica delightedly. ‘I know I’m not supposed to talk to you either, after the dreadful way you’ve betrayed Tony, but sit down and help me persuade Maud to audition for Hanna.’

Bas needed little persuading. Up to now he’d by-passed Maud in his amorous travels, partly because he had long-range aims for Taggie and partly because he’d realized how dotty Maud had been about Rupert at Christmas. Certainly, in the soft lighting of the Bar Sinister, she looked stunning today, and that violet dress was very becoming. It emphasized her white skin and just missed clashing with the gorgeous red hair, and all those undone buttons showed off a Cheddar Gorge of cleavage. Another bottle of Muscadet was ordered.

‘Bas is toying with the idea of playing your leading man,’ said Monica.

‘Hopefully it’ll lead to other things,’ said Basil, rubbing one of his long muscular, polo-playing thighs against Maud’s as he re-filled her glass.

Later, not even allowing her a cup of black coffee to sober her up, Basil and Monica frogmarched Maud down the High Street to the Town Hall where the director, Barton Sinclair, had reached screaming point, having heard ten amateur hopefuls murdering the score.

Up on stage now, the eleventh, a very made-up blonde, who’d never see fifty again, was crucifying the Vilja song. The pianist was desperately trying to keep in time with her. A huge bluebottle buzzing against a window pane was having more success.

‘She’d be too fat even if you looked through the wrong end of your binoculars,’ whispered Bas to Maud. ‘At least you can do better than that.’

‘I can’t,’ muttered Maud in terror. ‘That’s Top G she’s missing.’

As she tried to bolt, Bas’s arm closed round her waist. ‘Yes, you can,’ he murmured. ‘Just think of the fun we can have rehearsing together night after night, and it won’t be all singing I can tell you.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Barton Sinclair in his chorus-boy drawl.

‘I sang the part in 1979,’ said the blonde, teetering down the steps in her four-inch heels. ‘It brought the house down.’

‘Pity you weren’t buried under the rubble,’ muttered Barton. ‘We’ll be in touch. I’ll be making a decision at the end of the week,’ he told her. Then, waiting until she was safely out of the door, he turned to Monica. ‘That’s the lot, thank God. Talk about scraping the barrel organ.’

‘I’m going home,’ said Maud.

‘Could you hear just one more?’ said Monica.

Barton Sinclair looked at his watch and sighed: ‘Do I have to? I was hoping to get the three forty-five back to Paddington.’

‘It’ll be worth getting the next train, I promise you,’ said Monica. ‘This is Maud O’Hara. She used to act and sing professionally.’

Barton Sinclair straightened his flowered tie, and smoothed his straggly mouse-brown hair.

‘You certainly look the part,’ he said.

‘I haven’t practised,’ bleated Maud, the crespolini and the Sancerre churning like a tumble-dryer inside her.

‘Try the same song,’ said Barton, handing her the score. ‘Take it slowly, Mike,’ he added to the pianist.

‘You come in on the last quaver of the fourth bar,’ the pianist told Maud kindly.

Below her, Maud could see their faces: Monica’s eager, flushed and unpainted, Basil’s sleek and mahogany, and Barton Sinclair’s London night owl and deathly pale. They seemed infinitely more terrifying than a first night audience at Covent Garden.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered, wringing her sweating hands.

‘Go on, darling,’ said Bas. ‘We’re all on your side.’

Off went the pianist. Maud fluffed the opening.

‘I’m sorry. Could we start again?’

‘Of course,’ said Barton.

Off went the pianist again, and Maud opened her mouth.

There once lived a Vilja, a fair mountain sprite,

She danced on a hill in the still of the night.

Her voice was sweet, true and hesitant, but suddenly, as she launched into the main theme, it seemed to soar out glorious and joyful, stilling the bluebottle and taking the dust off the rafters, and the four other people in the room felt the hair rising on the backs of their necks.

‘A star is re-born,’ whispered Monica, wiping her eyes.

‘I am going to have a nice Autumn,’ reflected Basil. ‘Over forty, they’re always so grateful!’

‘Vilja, Oh, Vilja, be tender and true,’ sang Maud, triple pianissimo, ‘Love me and I’ll die for you.’

For a second there was silence, then her audience burst out clapping and cheering.

‘Come into Covent Garden, Maud,’ sang Basil.

‘You’ve got the part,’ said Barton Sinclair. ‘The only problem is how much you’re going to show up the others.’

‘Thank you, Barton,’ said Monica and Basil in unison.

After that they all went back to the Bar Sinister for several more bottles of Muscadet and Barton Sinclair only just made the six forty-five.

Tony and Declan were very apprehensive when they heard the news of such close fraternization between the rival franchise sides. On reflection, however, Tony decided he’d definitely got the better bargain. While Maud was a rattle who drank far too much, Monica drank very little and was incredibly discreet.

‘Keep your trap shut and your ears open,’ Tony told her. ‘You may learn some interesting things.’

‘I’m not pumping anyone,’ said Monica firmly. ‘It’s simply not on. Only if anyone lets anything drop.’

‘It’ll be knickers if Bas has anything to do with it,’ said Tony.

Declan, however, who was going to have to spend the second half of September and much of October in Ireland with Cameron, was principally relieved that Maud was so much happier. The sound of her carolling away upstairs practising her songs reminded him of the carefree days in Dublin when they were first married. Perhaps, if The Merry Widow were a success, she’d have enough confidence to take up acting professionally again.

Caitlin, who had now dyed her custard-yellow hair so black it almost looked blue, found her mother’s euphoria even more irritating than her previous picky depression, and decided to push off to London for a few days to stay with some schoolfriends. She was going back the week after next and might as well have some fun before the prison doors clanged round her again.

She found Taggie in the kitchen fainting over a final reminder from the Electricity Board. ‘I can’t think why it’s so high.’

‘Mummy’s vibrator’s battery-operated, so it can’t be that,’ said Caitlin. ‘Hullo, darling,’ she added, hugging Claudius.

‘He’s in disgrace,’ sighed Taggie. ‘He’s just eaten one of Mummy’s new slingbacks.’

‘Good thing; they were gross,’ said Caitlin. ‘Every Claud has a silver lining! Can you lend me fifty pounds to go to London?’

‘I haven’t got it,’ protested Taggie. ‘I’ve just lent Daddy a hundred pounds for a new pair of cords for Ireland.’

‘At least I’ll be gone for nearly a week, so you won’t have to feed me,’ cajoled Caitlin. ‘So that’s worth fifty.’

‘And we haven’t done your trunk yet,’ wailed Taggie. ‘You’ve grown out of everything, you need new Aertex shirts, and both your games’ skirts are split.’

‘Oh, sew them up,’ said Caitlin airily. ‘We can’t possibly afford new ones if we’re so poor.’