Rivals (16 page)

Maud, shattered and weakened, never took to Taggie the same way as she had to Patrick who’d been born with such ease. As a child Taggie developed normally except that she walked and spoke very late, and even when she was four was only able to manage single syllables and might have been talking Japanese.

At school in Dublin, the staff, eagerly awaiting another dazzlingly bright pupil like Patrick, were disappointed to find that Taggie couldn’t read or write. She was also very clumsy and hopeless at dressing herself, putting shoes on the wrong foot, clothes back to front, doing up the wrong buttons and quite unable to tie her laces. Because she couldn’t tell the time, and had no sense of direction, she always ended in the wrong classroom, bringing the wrong books, and because she was so tall, people automatically assumed she was older than her age, and dismissed her as even more lazy and stupid.

Patrick, two and a half years older, was constantly fighting her battles, but he couldn’t help her in class, when the other children teased her and the teachers shouted at her, nor during those agonizing sessions at home when Maud lost her temper and screamed, but in the end got so bored that she sometimes ended up doing Taggie’s homework for her.

Patrick never forgot those pieces of homework, smudged with tears of frustration, sweaty from effort, and later peppered with red writing and crossings-out from the teachers.

Early detection of dyslexia and special teaching can quickly put a child within reach or even on a level with the rest of the class. Taggie was left to flounder, constantly losing confidence, until at eleven she came to England with the family and was about to be put in a school for backward children.

In the end it was Patrick, who got a scholarship to Westminster with ease and who, acquiring a friend there with a dyslexic older sister, persuaded his parents to have Taggie tested by an educational psychologist. He pronounced Taggie severely dyslexic and said she should be sent immediately to a special school.

Maud now felt even more ambiguous about Taggie. She never told anyone what the psychologist had said to her in that brief bitter exchange after he’d seen Taggie, nor would she ever admit that she felt desperately guilty for not seeking help for the child’s problems earlier.

Nor was there any way, once the condition was diagnosed, that Maud would ever have the patience and routine to spend each evening helping Taggie with her reading and learning of the alphabet. Declan was always too busy. So it was Patrick, and later Caitlin, who came to her rescue.

Five years of specialist teaching produced dramatic improvements. At sixteen Taggie wrote her first essay. She still wasn’t confident in the order of the alphabet, she still read slowly and hesitantly, following the text with her finger. She had never really mastered joined up writing, and punctuation was a closed book. Her spelling was atrocious and she still didn’t automatically know her left from her right, and had to think back to the kitchen in Fulham and Patrick saying: ‘Window on the right, Tag, Aga on the left.’

It still took her ages to write letters or recipes, and when they moved to The Priory it took her much longer than the others to find her way round all the rooms. She also always double-checked telephone numbers, asking people to repeat them, ever since the nightmarish day when one of Maud’s lovers had rung from America and asked if Maud could ring him back. Taggie had taken the number down wrong, and he’d never rung again. Occasionally, when she was drunk, Maud would bring this incident up: how Taggie had lost her the one great love of her life.

But at the end of her school career, although Taggie only managed O-levels in cooking and needlework, she left with an excellent final report: ‘
Taggie is a dear girl
,’ wrxgote her headmaster. ‘
Kind, hardworking, responsible
;
she deserves to do very well in life.
’

Offered a place at a catering college, she preferred to learn the hard way, and worked in a restaurant belonging to a friend of her father’s. After two years, coinciding with the family’s move to Penscombe, he regretfully told Taggie that although he would do anything to keep her, there was nothing else he could teach her.

She cooked, he said, by instinct, by pinches, a pinch of this here, a pinch of that there. Given a barrel of self-confidence, he told Declan, Taggie could be another Escoffier.

Inspired, Taggie was longing to start her own cooking business. There must be hundreds of people in Gloucestershire who needed someone to do dinner parties, or fill up their deep freezes at Christmas or at the beginning of the school holidays. But so much of her time lately had been spent looking after the family, or crying herself to sleep at night over Ralphie Henriques. Maybe now Caitlin had gone back and Patrick was on his way to Trinity, via three weeks in France, she could get started.

The following morning did little to raise Taggie’s spirits. She missed Caitlin and her acid asides dreadfully; the morning post brought no letter from Ralphie, and when Patrick rang from France, where he was staying with Ralphie’s family, to report he had arrived safely, he made no mention of him. When Taggie finally steeled herself to ask how he was, Patrick had replied that he was fine.

‘Doing a lot of water-skiing and drinking. But honestly, duck, I think you’d do better to cut your losses and find yourself a nice rosy-cheeked Gloucestershire farmer.’

Taggie was protesting that she didn’t want a Gloucestershire farmer when Maud swanned in, enraged that Taggie hadn’t told her that it was her beloved Patrick on the line, and seized the telephone.

As the alternatives that afternoon included picking apples, making green tomato chutney, or getting on Maud’s nerves, Taggie decided to take Gertrude for a walk and explore the village. In an attempt to beat her dyslexia she tried to learn a new word every day and use it. Today’s word was ‘abhorrent’. There was certainly nothing abhorrent about Penscombe that afternoon: the wind that shook her turret bedroom last night had dropped, while the little Beatrix Potter cottages, covered in velvety purple clematis, were white in the afternoon light. A lot of Bovver boys on their motorbikes by the war memorial eyed Taggie with great interest. A nice farmer who lived down the valley asked her how they were all getting on and said they must come and have supper when the long nights began. At the village shop Mrs Banks gave her a mutton bone for Gertrude and the new
TV Times
with Declan’s picture on the front, and an old lady with a blue greyhound stopped outside and exhorted her to look after the badgers who lived in the sets at the top of the Priory wood.

Cheered up by their friendliness, Taggie set out for home. She could feel the heat of the road through her espadrilles, thistledown drifted idly, and the sky was brilliant blue except for a few little violet clouds on the horizon. If only Ralphie were here with his hand in hers. Turning down the drive of yews, hollies, laurels, which almost hid The Priory from the top road, she remembered her promise to keep her eyes skinned for Rupert. She glanced across the valley, then gasped with horror as she saw a huge mushroom of brown smoke rising into the sky and realized that two of Rupert’s fields on the far side of the house were on fire.

She ran down the drive to The Priory, dashed into the kitchen and unearthed the Gloucestershire telephone directory. Oh God, she must keep calm. When she panicked, her reading went to pieces, and she had even more difficulty with the alphabet.

Callan, Calvay, Cam Auto Repairs, Camamile – with agonizing slowness her finger moved down the column. There were two Campbells, one in Gloucester, another in Nailsworth, then the list moved on to Cambridge and Campden. No Campbell-Blacks. Rupert must be ex-directory, like her father.

Out of the window great clouds of smoke were belching from Rupert’s red-hot flickering fields, the flames spreading ever nearer to the house. Taggie dialled 999. All the fire engines were out, explained the man at the other end, but they’d ring Cotchester. ‘Don’t worry, my love, we’ll get one over as soon as possible. ‘

All the same, thought Taggie, she’d better rush over and warn Rupert. He might not be able to see the fire from the house, although he’d probably be able to smell it. It would be so awful if any of the horses got trapped in their stables. . . .

She raced across the lawn with Gertrude, slithered down the beech wood, bumping on her bottom most of the way, and ran across the water meadows; then she leapt the bustling Frogsmore, before starting the steep climb up the other side. Ripping her clothes on barbed wire, oblivious of stinging nettles and brambles tearing at her bare arms and legs, losing an espadrille on the way, she panted on, past surprised horses knee deep in lush grass, past ancient oaks and beeches, skirting the lake, tearing across Rupert’s lawn, in through the french windows into a beautiful pale-yellow drawing-room, by which time she was so puffed she couldn’t even shout ‘Fire’.

Although the front door was open, no one was about. Returning to the garden through the french windows, her breath coming in great painful gasps, Taggie was about to run towards the stables when she heard shrieks of laughter coming from the tennis court on the left of the house, which was completely hidden by a thick beech hedge. As she raced down a gravel walk putting up red admirals, gorging themselves on the white buddleia on either side, she heard another shriek of laughter.

‘I can’t hit a bloody thing. I should never have had so much to drink at lunch,’ said a girl’s voice.

‘Tit-fault. Your tits were at least six inches over the line,’ said a man’s voice, a clipped light flat, very distinctive drawl.

‘Cock fault then,’ said the girl, giggling hysterically. ‘You must be at least ten inches over the line.’

‘You flatter me,’ said the man. ‘I wouldn’t be if you didn’t excite me so much.’

‘Fire,’ gasped Taggie to the beech hedge, but no sound came out.

The man was laughing now. ‘We’ll finish this set, and then I’ll finish you off upstairs. ‘

Taggie raced round the beech hedge until she came to a gap.

‘Fire,’ she croaked.

Then, very slowly, she realized to her utter horror that a tall, blond, lean, very suntanned man, and a beautiful girl with catkin blonde hair tied up in a pink ribbon, and a golden body like distilled sunflowers, were playing tennis with no clothes on at all.

The man was serving. His body rippled with muscle as the ball scorched across the net. Dropping her racket, the girl gave a shriek and rushed to the side of the court, breasts flopping everywhere, and covered herself with a pale-pink shirt. The man proceeded to serve the second ball very hard into the far netting, then sauntered almost insolently towards the net near Taggie, over which was hanging a darkblue towel.

‘Fire,’ mumbled Taggie, clapping her hands over her eyes.

‘What did you say?’ shouted the man. ‘It’s OK. You can look now.’

Very gingerly, Taggie lowered her hands. He had wrapped the dark-blue towel round his loins now. With his sleek blond hair, broad brown shoulders, and long, wickedly mocking eyes, as cornflower blue as the great expanse of sky behind him, he was quite unmistakable, from Caitlin’s photographs, as Rupert Campbell-Black.

Acutely aware of her heaving breasts and sweating red face, Taggie muttered, ‘Your fields are on fire.’

‘They’re meant to be,’ said Rupert.

‘Whatever for?’

‘Quickest way to get rid of the stubble after the harvest.’

‘But it’s the most a-a-abhorrent thing I’ve ever heard,’ whispered Taggie, utterly appalled. ‘What about the r-rabbits and voles and field mice and moles and all the poor birds?’

Rupert shrugged. ‘They’ve got legs; they can run away.’

‘Not that quickly,’ said Taggie furiously. ‘You’re a murderer.’

‘I suppose,’ snapped Rupert, thoroughly nettled, ‘that you want me to stop ploughing my fields because it’s cruel to worms, earwigs, beetles, woodlice and all the poor bugs.’ He was mimicking Taggie now. ‘Do you want me to give them a state funeral?’

The blonde girl giggled. She was very young, only a few years older than Taggie.

‘Oh shut up!’ screamed Taggie, losing her temper. ‘How would you like someone to set fire to you when you were in bed?’

Rupert nodded at the blonde. ‘She frequently does.’

‘Don’t be disgusting. You’re utterly abhorrent, the sort of person who always has to be killing something; hunting, fishing, shooting.’

At that moment, a lot of dogs, back from their walk with one of Rupert’s grooms, swarmed barking on to the court. There were Jack Russells, spaniels, a black labrador, and a beautiful shaggy blue lurcher, which bounded joyfully up to Gertrude, who bridled and curled her tail up even tighter.

Taggie pointed to the lurcher. ‘I bet you use that for coursing,’ she said furiously.

‘Why don’t you take that ugly brute back to its pigsty,’ said Rupert, picking up a green tennis ball and hurling it at Gertrude, ‘and stop interrupting other people’s innocent afternoon pleasures.’

‘Don’t you d-dare be beastly to Gertrude.’

Reaching for his racket, Rupert let his towel drop: ‘Forty love wasn’t it, darling?’

The blonde girl giggled again. But next moment the pussycat smile was wiped off her face as, with a manic jangling of bells, three fire engines roared up the drive.

‘Fucking hell!’ screamed Rupert.

Taggie gave a sob and fled back across the valley, her face flaming as much as her poor torn stung legs. Beastly, horrible, abhorrent man. Looking up in front of her she could see The Priory. Except for Declan’s twelve acres, all the land in the valley belonged to Rupert. Now, thought Taggie with a shudder, it seemed to curl round The Priory like a man trapping a woman at a party, putting his hands on the wall on either side of her, so she couldn’t escape.

Back home she found Maud sitting outside, wearing a big black hat to protect her white skin from the early evening sun, which had just crept round the side of the valley to admire her. She was drinking vodka and tonic and immersed in P. D. James.