Rivals (81 page)

Cameron, who’d been editing the Yeats rushes all week, and working hard with Declan on additional programme plans to present to the IBA next Friday, looked thin and drawn. She was worried Declan seemed suddenly distant. There was none of the intimacy they’d achieved in Ireland. Tonight, obviously hating being so near Tony, he was pale and edgy. As the only member of the party in a dinner jacket rather than a red coat, his black lowering presence seemed to accentuate Venturer’s gloom and tension.

Cameron was even more worried about Rupert, who had gone increasingly into his shell since she’d come back from Ireland. He also looked desperately tired. The new Socialist majority was so tiny that the Tories were determined to contest it to the full on every vote, which meant endless late night sittings. The interminable IBA rehearsals, even though both Henry and Wesley were word perfect now, were also taking their toll. Even Freddie didn’t seem his usual bouncy self. Only Valerie was appallingly unchanged.

‘What are you doing, Fred-Fred?’ she screeched, as Freddie started crawling around under the priceless Jacobean table.

‘Lookin’ for bugs.’

‘You’re more laikely to find woodworm,’ said Valerie disapprovingly. ‘I can’t think why Henry and Hermione don’t junk all this nasty dark stuff and invest in some decent Repro. And have you seen the state of the place?’ Valerie had already had a prowl round some of the bedrooms, the long gallery and the grand staircase with its heraldic leopards. ‘All the plaster’s peeling. There’s so much damp, and you should have seen the moths flutter out when I touched the drapes in Hermione’s bedroom.’

‘Didn’t you realize this is a moth sanctuary?’ said Rupert gravely. ‘You know Henry is Venturer’s conservation expert.’

Valerie looked at Rupert sharply. She was never sure if he wasn’t mobbing her up.

‘Actually I wanted to pick your brains,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘about Fred-Fred’s birthday. There was an article in
The Times
yesterday saying the latest thing in the hunting field is to have a brass flask of sherry attached to your saddle.’

‘Sounds hell,’ said Rupert with a yawn. ‘The only thing I want attached to my saddle is my bum.’

At that moment Tony paused in front of the Venturer table – surveying them with amusement.

‘I see the devil has cast his net,’ he said loudly.

‘If the holes in his net were as big as your mouth, we’d all escape,’ drawled Rupert.

Everyone at the surrounding tables howled with laughter and Tony retreated discomforted.

‘And Ladbroke’s has us at 2–1 on today,’ Rupert yelled after him.

Valerie turned to Cameron. ‘You’re looking a bit washed out. I don’t think black’s really your colour – too deadening. Why don’t you pop into the boutique and buy something naice for all the Christmas functions coming up?’

‘What’s the difference between a shop and a boutique?’ asked Henry, who’d got bored of welcoming people.

‘They sell exactly the same stuff, but a boutique is about five times as expensive,’ said Rupert.

Valerie looked very boutique-faced as Rupert turned his back on both of them.

People were sitting down at their tables now and the waitresses were beginning to carry plates of smoked trout down the aisles. Looking round, Rupert noticed the place was absolutely crawling with beautiful, only-too-available women. It was just the sort of evening he once would have revelled in, getting drunk and off with half of them, behaving atrociously, not a cordoned-off four-poster untested. What the hell was the matter with him? He didn’t even want to sleep with Cameron any more.

‘Where’s Taggie?’ asked Valerie, picking up her fork. ‘No, leave your bread roll, Fred-Fred.’

‘Dog-sitting,’ said Maud, holding up her glass for more Muscadet. ‘I don’t know what’s got into her at the moment, she’s so lethargic. I tried to persuade her to come this evening, but she wouldn’t. She hadn’t got a partner. When I was her age I had hordes of boys chasing after me.’

‘When all this franchise business is sorted out, we must all put our heads together and find her a decent guy,’ said Cameron.

‘Don’t be fucking silly,’ snapped Rupert. ‘You can’t find people for other people. Taggie’s perfectly capable of finding someone herself.’ He put his fork down, his trout hardly touched, and, refusing wine, asked the waiter to bring him a bottle of whisky.

Across at the Corinium table, Sarah Stratton plonked herself down beside James.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he hissed, giving her the sort of look delphinium growers reserve for slugs. ‘The High Sheriffs wife is supposed to be sitting there.’

‘I shifted the place cards,’ hissed back Sarah. ‘You don’t want to sit next to that old bag.’

‘But you’ve totally ruined Monica’s placement,’ said James in outrage. ‘And that means Tony’s got to sit next to the High Sheriff’s wife, which he won’t like one bit.’

‘Serve him right for trying to split us up. I love you.’

‘Keep your voice down.’ James looked furtively round.

‘I’ll talk even louder if you don’t let me stay. Surely you must have a programme in your marriage series on coping with temptation? Well, you can bloody well research it tonight.’

Home at The Priory, Taggie, having dispatched her parents to the ball, was wondering forlornly what to do for the rest of the evening. The only decent film on television was Italian, and she wouldn’t be able to read the subtitles fast enough to get the gist of it. It was a vicious night. The wind was howling round the windows, trying to get in out of the cold. The snow was falling steadily, already lining the window-ledge and bowing down the evergreens. At least there was a nice fire in the little sitting-room. Gertrude, Aengus and Claudius were all stretched out in front of the blaze. The logs came from their wood, or rather it was Rupert’s wood now; everything seemed to come back to him.

How will I ever get through my life without him, she thought hopelessly, when I can’t even face a much-longed-for free evening?

She jumped at a sudden pounding on the door. The bell was still blocked up with loo paper to discourage creditors. Outside was Hazel, one of the make-up girls from the BBC, who’d once worked on Declan’s programme and become a great family friend. Flakes of snow like brilliants in her hair gave her an added glamour. She’d been doing a job in Bristol and was on her way home.

‘Everyone’s out except me,’ apologized Taggie, ‘but come in and have a drink.’

‘What a lovely house, really Gothic,’ said Hazel in awe as they went into the sitting-room.

‘Not too large,’ she squawked, as Taggie poured her a vodka and tonic. ‘I’ve got to drive back to London.’

‘You must stay the night,’ urged Taggie. ‘You can’t drive in this weather and Daddy’ll be d-devastated to have missed you.’

‘I can’t believe Caitlin’s taking O-levels. She was such a wee little thing,’ said Hazel twenty minutes later. ‘And Patrick got a first, and he’s as tall as your Dad. I do hope your Dad gets the franchise. We’re all rooting for him at the Beeb. Tony Baddingham’s such a shit.’

The telephone rang. It was Bas. ‘Taggie, babe, you’re coming to the ball.’

‘I can’t,’ squeaked Taggie. ‘I’ve got someone here.’

‘Well get rid of them. Annabel, my date, has been out all day with the Belvoir, and the snow’s too bad for her to drive down, and anyway, she’s bushed. So I’ve got no one to go with and I can’t think of anyone more delicious than you.’

‘I haven’t got anything to wear.’

‘Fret not, I’ll be over in an hour with some frocks.’

‘I’ve been asked to the Hunt Ball,’ said Taggie in awe.

‘Wonderful,’ said Hazel excitedly. ‘I’ll dog-sit. Go and wash your hair and have a bath. I’ll make you up. You’ll come up beautifully.’

Bas, naughty as his word, arrived an hour later with a back seat loaded up with ball dresses.

‘Where did you get them?’ asked Taggie incredulously.

‘Corinium’s wardrobe department,’ said Bas. ‘Their security is atrocious.’

‘What a gorgeous man,’ murmured Hazel enviously, ‘and I’ve had some heart-throbs through my fingers in my time.’

‘This dress is made by B-A-L-Main,’ spelt out Taggie slowly. ‘What happens if I put my foot through it?’

‘Try the crimson one,’ said Bas. ‘It’s much the best colour for you and at least it won’t show up the red wine that’s bound to get poured over you.’

‘It’s awfully low-cut,’ said Taggie dubiously.

‘All the better,’ said Hazel, checking the Carmen rollers. ‘Hurry up and decide. I want to do your hair.’

Back at the ball, dinner was over and dancing had begun. It was a measure of Monica’s niceness that no one else but she knew that Valerie had auditioned and been turned down for both Maud and Monica’s parts in
The Merry Widow.
Still smarting from the rejection (she would have been
so
much better than Maud), Valerie was now determined to demonstrate her dancing skills and had dragged a reluctant Freddie on to the floor. She was soon bawling him out.

‘Can’t you concentrate for one minute, Fred-Fred? I said fish-tail not telemarque.’

Through a swirling herbaceous border of red coats and brilliantly coloured dresses, Freddie could see Lizzie in fuchsia pink being humped round the floor by James, who’d at last managed to shake off Sarah.

As they passed Tony sitting at the Corinium table, James deliberately pressed his cheek and his body against Lizzie’s.

I can’t stand it, thought Lizzie wretchedly. She’d imagined it would be better seeing Freddie tonight, than not seeing him at all, but it made everything much, much worse.

Watching across the room, Freddie wanted to punch James on his perfectly straight nose, and then whisk Lizzie upstairs on to a moth-infested four-poster and tear off her fuchsia dress and kiss her all over.

‘Fred-Fred,’ screeched Valerie in his ear, ‘are you tipsy? This is a foxtrot.’

Declan danced with Maud, who was well away. Over his shoulder she glanced at her gold watch. Bas was very late. At the Venturer table it was plain to Cameron, watching Rupert pour another large whisky, that he was deliberately setting out to get drunk. People kept pausing to say hullo, but, seeing the set expression on his face and the sinister glitter in his eyes, they didn’t stay long. Cameron, acutely conscious of Tony two tables away talking in lowered tones to Ginger Johnson and watching her every move, tried to talk to Rupert. A slow anger rose in her when he only answered in monosyllables.

Why make it so obvious that you’ve absolutely no interest in me, she wanted to scream. Was he deliberately goading her to go back to Tony?

‘The next dance is definitely mine,’ said Henry to Cameron.

‘Oh, good. Here’s Bas at last,’ said Maud, pinning up a tendril of hair at the back.

‘Good Lord,’ said Henry in wonder, his glass of wine poised halfway to his lips. ‘What a stunning girl!’

‘Annabel Kemble-Taylor’s hardly a girl,’ said Rupert, who had his back to the floor. ‘Half Leicestershire’s been up her.’

‘She is pretty. Most dramatical,’ said Freddie, putting on his spectacles. ‘Blimey, it’s Taggie.’

Rupert swung round and caught his breath. There, undulating across the floor, rouged, lipsticked, her eyes vast and black-lined with kohl, black hair a mass of snakey ringlets, her shoulders, far creamier and lusher than Maud’s, rising out of a ruched crimson dress with a bustle, was indeed Taggie. Everyone was turning round to gawp at her. Basil, who’d been slowly stalking her for fourteen months, looked beside himself with pride.

‘You look like a Christmas cracker,’ he whispered in her ear, as he fingered the ruched dress, ‘and, my God, I can’t wait to pull you.’

Taggie giggled. She was slightly overwhelmed by how different Hazel had made her look and the sensation she seemed to be creating. Her only aim was to please Rupert. She wanted to show him that she had at last grown up. But as he stared at her, his face totally unsmiling, her courage failed and she gave the dress a desperate tug upwards. Then, just as she and Bas reached the Venturer table, the band started again.

‘Lady in Red,’ said Basil in delight. ‘How appropriate.’ And, taking Taggie’s bag from her and dropping it in front of Rupert in a curiously insolent gesture, he swept her onto the floor.

‘I can’t dance,’ pleaded Taggie, half-laughing. ‘I truly, truly can’t.’

‘You can with me,’ said Bas, putting his hand round her waist. ‘This is a nice slow one to start with. This song could have been written for you, you are so so beautiful. ‘
Never seen you looking so lovely as you do tonight
,’ he sang,
never seen you shine so bright.
’

‘I find all this lipstick a bit strange,’ said Taggie.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll kiss it all off later.’

Taggie blushed. He was at least five inches taller than her, and so supple and strong, and with such a Latin sense of rhythm, that Taggie was soon following him perfectly in time.

‘You dance beautifully,’ he said, laying his cheek against her hair.

‘I can do it,’ said Taggie excitedly. ‘I can really dance.’

‘
The lady in red is dancing with me
, sang Bas gazing deep into her eyes, ‘
There’s nobody here, just you and me.
’ What a good thing Annabel had such an exhausting day with the Belvoir.’

‘
Lady in red, Lady in red
,’ sang Taggie dreamily and tunelessly, not knowing any of the other words. ‘It is a most gorgeous song.’

‘And you’re the most gorgeous girl,’ said Basil, french-kissing her shoulder.

‘Very fast man across country, Bas,’ said Henry approvingly.

‘Very fast man on the dance floor,’ said Freddie. ‘Don’t they go well togevver?’

Maud was looking extremely wintry. Cameron was watching Rupert. His face was like marble, but the tendons on the back of his hand, which was clenched round his glass, were like underground cables. He never took his eyes off Taggie as she and Bas moved round the floor. Then, suddenly, as the music stopped and Bas bent his otter-sleek head and kissed Taggie on her crimson mouth, his hand tightened on the glass so convulsively that it shattered. Amazingly he didn’t cut himself, but there was glass everywhere.