Rivals (11 page)

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

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 opposite 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.

Half a mile upstream, the village of Penscombe, with its church spire and ancient ash-blond houses, lay in a cleavage of green hills like a retirement poster promising a happy future. Lizzie, however, turned right, clambering over a mossy gate into a beech wood, whose smooth grey trunks soared like the pipes of some vast organ. Following a zig-zagging path upwards, which three times crossed a waterfall hurtling down to join the Frogsmore, Lizzie finally stumbled and panted her way to the top.

Across a hundred-yard sweep of lawn, which was now almost a hayfield, rose the confusion of mediaeval chimneys, pointed gables, gothic turrets and crenellated battlements that made up Penscombe Priory. On either side with the sun behind them like a funeral cortège towered great black yew trees, cedars and wellingtonias. To the left of the lawn, where once, before the dissolution of the monasteries, the nuns must have strolled and prayed, grew a tangled rose walk.

Poor O’Haras, thought Lizzie, as she hurried along it. After divorce and death, moving house is supposed to be the most traumatic experience. But, as she skirted a large pond overgrown with water lilies, round to the front of the house which faced into the hillside for shelter, she was suddenly deafened by pop music booming out of two of the upstairs turrets, and opera, she thought it was
Rheingold
, pouring out of the other two.

The old oak front door, studded with nails, was open. On the sweep of gravel outside a van was still being unloaded. Peering inside, Lizzie noticed some very smeary furniture (the O’Haras
would
be needing a ‘treasure’ after all), a grand piano whose yellow keys seemed to be leering at her, and several tea chests full of books.

Sprawling over the front porch was an ancient clematis which acted as a curtain for the bathroom window above and covered the doorbell, which didn’t work anyway. Inside Lizzie called ‘Hullo-oo, hullo-oo,’ in a high voice.

Next minute a very plain, self-important black and white mongrel appeared, barking furiously and wagging a tightly curled tail.

Turning right down the hall into the kitchen, which was situated in the oldest, thirteenth-century part of the house, Lizzie found a woman, whom she assumed must be Declan’s wife Maud. Ravishing, but inappropriately dressed in a pink sequinned T-shirt, lime-green tracksuit bottoms, with a jewelled comb in her long red hair, she was very slowly unpacking china from a tea chest, stopping to smooth out and read each bit of paper it was wrapped in, and drinking whisky out of a tea cup.

On the window seat, training a pair of binoculars on Rupert Campbell-Black’s house, knelt a teenage girl with spiky short pink hair, a brace on her teeth and a pale, clever charming face. In her black clumpy shoes, wrinkled socks and black woolly cardigan, she looked like a tramp who’d just changed into his old clothes. Neither of them took any notice when Lizzie came in. But a very tall girl in jeans and a dark-green jersey, with a cloud of thick black hair, strange silver-grey eyes, and a smudge on her cheek, who was quickly unloading china, looked up and smiled.

‘I live down the valley,’ announced Lizzie. ‘I’ve brought you some eggs and a bottle. Don’t open it now. It’s a bit shaken up. Put it in the fridge.’

‘Oh, how really kind of you,’ said the dark girl. She had a soft deep slightly gruff voice, like a teddy bear’s growl. She looked very tired.

Maud, having finished reading her piece of newspaper, glanced up and gave Lizzie the benefit of her amazing eyes which were almond-shaped, sleepy, fringed with very thick dark red lashes, and as brilliantly green as Bristol glass. Deciding Lizzie was worthy of interest, she introduced her daughters Taggie, short for Agatha, the tall dark one, and Caitlin, the little redhead.

The sink was crammed with flowers still in cellophane. Sidling over, Lizzie noticed one lot was from Tony and Monica Baddingham, wishing the O’Haras good luck in their new house and a long and happy association with Corinium.

‘All the nation’s press tramped through here yesterday in the mud trying to interview Declan,’ grumbled Maud. ‘
TV Times
has been here all morning photographing us moving in. Two local papers are due this afternoon, and a man from the Electricity Board has been rabbiting on like Mr Darcy about the inferiority of our connections and says the whole place will have to be rewired. Have a drink.’

She extracted a mug wrapped in a page of
New Statesman
, splashed some whisky into it for Lizzie and filled up her own tea cup.

‘It’s a glorious house,’ said Lizzie, raising her mug to them. ‘Welcome. We’re all wildly excited you’ve come to live here.’

‘After yesterday’s deluge, we’ve discovered it leaks in half a dozen places,’ said Maud, ‘so we shall probably have to have a new roof as well.’

‘We’re thinking of letting our grounds to some cows,’ said Caitlin, putting down her binoculars and helping herself to a chocolate biscuit, which she proceeded to share with the black and white mongrel who was drooling on the window seat beside her.

‘Moving’s very disorientating,’ she went on. ‘Daddy’s trying to work upstairs, and he’s frantic because he’s lost his telephone book. Taggie’s lost her bra.’