Rivals (72 page)

‘Cait-lin,’ remonstrated Taggie, going pink. ‘Rupert hasn’t got all day. I thought you wanted to be ready by twelve. Go and have a bath.’

Grinning, Rupert took Caitlin upstairs and showed her where everything was. Taggie glanced at some photographs of Tabitha at Wembley which were lying on the kitchen table.

‘Aren’t these gorgeous?’ she said, as Rupert came back. ‘I saw a bit of it on television at Sarah Stratton’s, but I missed the final. Did her team win?’

‘No, but they came third, and she did well.
Horse and Hound
described her as a “chip off the old Campbell-Black”; which was nice.’

‘Marvellous,’ said Taggie. ‘Am I in your way?’ she asked as Rupert paused on his way to the fridge.

‘No, I just like standing behind you. I know you’ll spring to her defence, but your mother is an absolute disgrace. Swanning off with all Caitlin’s clothes at her age. Maud’s trouble is that she wants to have her cake and eat it, and make trifle out of it as well.’

Taggie giggled, but she said, ‘I know, but it’s such a relief that she’s happy and working again. She might even start doing it professionally, and she’s so beautiful,’ Taggie sighed. ‘It’s hardly surprising all the cast’s in love with her.’

Rupert privately deduced that Maud must be in love with one of the cast to have lost enough weight to get into Caitlin’s jeans, but merely said, ‘I’ve got a hangover. Let’s have a drink.’

‘I mustn’t,’ said Taggie, ‘or I’ll make another cock-up of cooking tonight.’

‘Don’t say you’re working again?’ said Rupert, appalled. Taggie nodded dolefully.

‘Jesus,’ said Rupert. ‘I’d better make a date with you for
next
October.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ stammered Taggie, hanging her head, ‘It’s n-not that I wouldn’t love to.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Rupert. ‘My children are coming over this afternoon. Why don’t you come out with us for the day tomorrow, and help me entertain them?’

‘I’ll make a picnic,’ said Taggie, suddenly excited.

‘No, you won’t. For once you’re not going to cook a thing.’

With both Maud and Caitlin plundering her wardrobe, Taggie was at her wit’s end as to what to wear. Feeling desperately guilty, with the Electricity Board, the television hire firm, the village shop, and God knows who else baying to be paid, she blued, or rather greyed, Friday lunchtime’s cash wages on a pale-grey cashmere polo-neck which brought out the silver-grey in her eyes and clung to her in all the right places. There was no more money, so she’d have to wear her old black cords.

Next morning Maud whizzed off very early to yet another rehearsal. Caitlin, who nobly said she’d dogs it and read
Antony and Cleopatra,
hustled Taggie out of the house.

‘You look delectable. Randy Rupe won’t be able to keep his hands off you. Don’t hurry back. I’m quite OK on my own -’ she smirked wickedly – ‘or, almost on my own. The Hon Arch will be dropping by
plus tard.
Or Marble Arch, as I call him, now he’s lost his suntan.’

Tabitha, amid the swirling pack of dogs, answered the door looking belligerent. She was wearing a pink sweater embroidered with blue flowers and a blue puff-ball skirt.

‘Hullo,’ said Taggie in delight. ‘I recognize
you
; you were on television last Saturday. You were wonderful, and what a beautiful clever pony. He was much the fastest. What’s his name?’

‘Biscuit,’ said Tabitha coldly.

‘Can I see him?’

‘He’s at my other house.’

‘Oh, what a shame. I’ve brought him some carrots.’ Taggie rummaged round in a carrier bag, ‘and I’ve made you some fudge.’

‘Thank you,’ said Tab, looking slightly mollified. ‘Can I have a bit now?’

‘I don’t see why not. I like your puff-ball skirt. I wanted to get one, but my knees are far too knobbly.’

‘Mummy says hers are, too,’ said Tab. ‘Perhaps they’re not suitable for grown-ups.’

Stroking the dogs, Taggie sat down on one of the stone seats inside the porch.

‘What’s your name again?’ said Tabitha.

‘Taggie. It’s really Agatha, isn’t that awful? Tabitha’s so much nicer. My parents call me Tag, sometimes, which sounds just like Tab, doesn’t it? I expect when Marcus shouts Tab we’ll both go charging into the kitchen to see what he wants and bump into each other in the doorway.’

Tabitha stared at her consideringly, and suddenly she smiled.

‘And you’re nine and a quarter?’ said Taggie.

‘Yes,’ sighed Tab, pushing her blonde hair out of her eyes. ‘Can’t you see my wrinkles?’

Taggie giggled. ‘Still, it’s awfully young to be in the Mounted Games. Were you the youngest?’

‘Yes,’ said Tab. ‘If you come back to Warwickshire with us tonight you can see Biscuit. We’ve got a foal here. Would you like to come and see it?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Taggie.

The front door opened; it was Marcus. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Daddy wants to know where you’ve got to.’

‘She’s talking to me, stupid,’ said Tab. ‘She’s brought you some fudge.’

‘Tag,’ bellowed Rupert from the kitchen, ‘where are you?’

‘Here,’ said Tab and Tag in unison. Then they both looked at each other and burst out laughing.

Taking Taggie’s hand, Tabitha dragged her into the kitchen. ‘Can she come back to Warwickshire with us this evening and see Biscuit?’ said Tabitha.

Rupert, who was drinking black coffee and reading the racing pages of the
Sunday Times,
looked surprised.

‘Of course she can. I thought you’d kidnapped her.’

‘She’s brought us fudge, and carrots for Biscuit, and a big bottle of cough mixture,’ said Tabitha, unpacking the carrier bag.

‘It’s sloe gin,’ said Taggie, blushing. ‘I made it yesterday. You mustn’t drink it for three months.’

‘Thank you, angel,’ said Rupert, kissing her on the cheek. ‘I hope I don’t have to wait that long for you,’ he murmured in an undertone.

‘Come
on
, Taggie,’ said Tabitha impatiently. ‘I thought you wanted to see the foal. This fudge is smashing.’

They had lunch in Cheltenham in an up-market hamburger bar. The children, who insisted on sitting on either side of Taggie, had huge milkshakes. Rupert, who complained he had alcohol shakes, ordered a carafe of red.

‘That jersey suits you,’ he said approvingly to Taggie. ‘How d’you manage to keep it out of Maud’s clutches?’

Taggie blushed. ‘I slept with it under my pillow.’

‘We’re doing a “Messiah” at the end of term,’ announced Tabitha, sucking air noisily from the bottom of her milkshake. ‘There are going to be two trumpets and a drum, and real fathers in the chorus. I’m in the altos. They’re much naughtier because they’re mostly boys, silly twits.’

‘D’you like singing?’ asked Taggie.

‘No. Mrs Brown takes us. She’s just got married. She takes us for history too. She was reading a book called
Improving your Home
in class this week.’

‘She was reading a book about drains in our class,’ said Marcus.

‘And that’s what I pay your school fees for,’ grumbled Rupert. ‘I wish they’d organize a sponsored walk to Save the Parents.’

Having ordered, he looked across at Taggie, who was talking to Marcus about conkers.

‘We used to roast them slowly in the oven to harden them up.’

‘We soak them in vinegar,’ said Marcus.

‘My sister Caitlin used to put them in the hot cupboard and they always fell down behind the boiler and went mouldy. We’ve got masses at The Priory if you want any more, but I expect you’ve got hundreds already.’

Christ, she’s sweet, thought Rupert, noticing the way the grey cashmere moulded the full breasts.

‘Mary had a little lamb and surprised the midwife,’ said Tabitha to her father.

‘Really,’ said Rupert absent-mindedly.

‘Mary had a little lamb and surprised the midwife. It’s a joke.’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Rupert, filling up Taggie’s glass.

‘Why d’you always say ha ha and not mean it? Can I have a packet of Frazzles?’

‘No,’ said Rupert. ‘Here’s your lunch.’

‘Can I have punk hair like Cameron?’ said Tabitha, picking bits of mushroom out of her salad and putting them round the edge of her plate.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t like short hair.’

‘You’ve got very nice hair,’ said Marcus to Taggie, blushing scarlet as he bit into his hamburger.

‘Yes,’ agreed Rupert. ‘She has.’

Tabitha gazed dreamily into space. ‘Mrs Bodkin must have slept with Mr Bodkin an awful lot of times.’

‘What on earth makes you think that?’ asked Rupert in amazement.

‘She told me she’d had four miscarriages,’ said Tab.

Taggie didn’t dare look at Rupert. She thought she had never been happier in her life. Suddenly the most ordinary things – a hamburger smothered in tomato ketchup, the mural of the village street round the wall, with its milk cart and postman – were illuminated because she was with Rupert and these adorable children.

‘Everything all right, Meester Campbell-Black?’ asked the Manager.

‘Perfect,’ said Rupert. ‘Could we have another carafe of red?’

‘I would like to congratulate you,’ went on the Manager, looking round rapturously at Marcus, Tab and Taggie. ‘I never knew you haff three such beautiful children.’

RIVALS

After lunch, they went for a walk in Rupert’s woods. It was ridiculously mild. Insects moved leisurely in the rays slanting through the thinning beech trees, like specks of dust caught in the light from a projector. Birds sang drowsily, orange leaves drifted down on to already orange paths. The squirrels, stupefied by the sun, were fooling around on the ground instead of gathering nuts.

‘What are you singing at school?’ asked Taggie.

‘“Green grow the rushes-oh,”’ said Tab.

‘
I’ll sing you three-oh
,’ sang Marcus.

‘
What is your three-oh
?’ sang back Tab.

‘
Three for the rivals
,
Two
,
two the lily-white boys, Clothed all in green-o
,’ replied Marcus, his pure treble echoing through the soaring cathedral of beech trunks. Then both children took up the chant:

‘
One is one and all alone
,
And ever more shall be so.
’

‘Lovely,’ sighed Taggie.

‘Three for the rivals sounds like Corinium, Venturer and Mid-West,’ said Rupert.

He used up a couple of reels of film, then, exhausted after a strenuous week at Blackpool, fell asleep under a chestnut tree, while Taggie played games with the children.

‘D’you know,’ she said, drawing them away down the ride so they wouldn’t wake Rupert, ‘that every time you catch a falling leaf, you get a happy day? Let’s see if we can catch thirty, so we can give Daddy a really happy November when he wakes up.’

‘Easy peasy,’ said Tabitha, leaping forward as a yellow sycamore leaf pirouetted through the air towards her, then, caught by a puff of wind, dummied round her and fluttered to the ground.

‘It’s harder than it looks,’ panted Marcus, reaching out as a twig of ash leaves floated tantalizingly out of his grasp. ‘Would those have counted as seven?’

‘Not really,’ said Taggie.

‘Bugger,’ screamed Tab, as she just missed a beech leaf.

‘Hush,’ said Taggie. ‘We mustn’t wake Daddy.’

Silently they raced round the wood trying to suppress their screams of joy whenever they managed to catch a leaf. After a particularly piercing yell, when Tab tripped over a bramble cable but managed to hang on to a wand of chestnut leaves, Rupert woke up; but he pretended to be asleep. Watching Taggie, gambolling long-legged over the beech leaves, pony-tail flying, looking, as the Manager had thought, not a day over fourteen, he was suddenly kneed in the groin with longing.

‘Here you are, Daddy,’ said Tabitha, her hands full of leaves, ‘a whole happy month for you.’

Rupert, who privately thought that the only thing that could make him happy at the moment was a whole month in bed with Taggie, said thank you very much.

‘Can we go and see the new Woody Allen?’ asked Tabitha.

Rupert looked at his watch: ‘It’s nearly four o’clock. You’ll be very late back.’ The last thing he wanted to do was to go to the cinema.

‘We can go on our way home,’ pleaded Tabitha.

‘We’ve done our homework,’ said Marcus.

Rupert turned to Taggie who said she’d adore to see it; anything to prolong the day with Rupert.

‘I’m going to sit next to Taggie,’ said Tabitha, seizing her hand.

‘I’m going to sit next to her too,’ said Marcus, taking her other hand.

‘If she sits on my knee, you can both sit next to her,’ said Rupert.

Severely jolted, he felt it was increasingly necessary to make a joke about the whole thing.

The Woody Allen was extremely funny, but Taggie hardly took any of it in, she was so aware of Rupert slumped in the seat beyond Tabitha gazing totally unmoved at the screen. How awful for Rupert being left by Helen and losing these heavenly children, living alone by himself in that big house.

‘
One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so
,’ sang Tabitha as they drove home.

Taggie felt Rupert’s loss far more acutely when she met Helen, who was simply the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, with huge serious yellow eyes and long red hair drawn back in two combs from her freckled face, and incredibly slim ankles and wrists. She had the same colouring as Maud, reflected Taggie, but while Maud cavorted untrainably through life like a red setter bestowing her favours indiscriminately, Helen would be far more fastidious and sparing with her affections. Helen was like a red deer. If you tamed and won the confidence of anything so delicate and nervous, you’d feel incredibly proud.

But before she had much time to observe Helen or her husband, Malise, who seemed very old, Taggie was dragged off to the stables by Tabitha to meet Biscuit and Dollop. Then she had to see Marcus’s room and then Tabitha’s room, both extraordinarily tidy (in fact, the whole house was incredibly tidy for a Sunday evening), by which time it was well past the children’s bedtime.