Rivals (86 page)

‘Bugger off. I feel terrible.’

‘You’re not going to feel any better when you read this,’ said Bas, handing him a Fernet Branca and the
Scorpion
, which Rupert read in silence.

‘The dirty bitch,’ he said softly. ‘She said she’d get me in the end.’

It was as though some terrible monster from his past had put a hand up from a manhole and dragged him down into the mire and slime below. He went straight to the lavatory and threw up.

‘Lend me a toothbrush, and then a telephone,’ he said to Bas. He was put straight through to Freddie.

‘Look, I’ve only just seen the
Scorpion.
I’m ringing up to resign.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Freddie.

‘I’ve got to. There are two more days to go, and it’s bound to get worse. Unless I pull out, there’s no way you’ll get the franchise.’

‘Don’t be rash, mate. We won’t be much good at running a TV station if we can’t ride out somefink like this. Got to stick togevver. Come over ’ere and we’ll sort out the best plan of action, but you’re not resigning.’

‘Up to me really,’ said Rupert. ‘I must see Cameron, and then I’ll be over.’

Arriving at Penscombe, he found cars parked all the way up his drive, and the gravel in front of the house completely hidden by journalists, photographers and television crews. Corinium had even had the temerity to send a mobile canteen. Stony-faced, greyer than the trampled snow, Rupert got out of his car.

‘Fuck off, the lot of you,’ he snarled as they all surged forward. ‘I’ve got to talk to my lawyer.’

‘What about the franchise?’ asked the
Mail on Sunday.

‘Come on, Rupe,’ said the
Star.
‘Give us a quote. We’ve waited all fucking night.’

‘I’ve got nothing to say. I’ll put my dogs on you if you don’t beat it.’ Fighting his way into the house, he slammed the door behind him.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Cameron from halfway up the stairs.

She wore no make-up, and her hair was sleeked back from her face which was deathly white.

‘I’m sorry,’ began Rupert.

‘Fuck off,’ screamed Cameron, as a photographer appeared at a side window. Racing downstairs, she drew the curtains.

‘Come upstairs,’ said Rupert.

They went into his bedroom, the set for so much of the action in the first instalment of the memoirs. Almost as though the great four-poster would contaminate her, Cameron gave it a wide berth and went over to the fireplace.

‘How could you?’ she whispered. ‘Have you told people those sort of things about me?’

‘Never, never,’ said Rupert. Suddenly dizzy, he slumped on the flowered chintz-covered chair in front of Helen’s old dressing table. ‘Beattie was a special case. The thing that turned her on was stories of my screwing other women. She must have had a tape recorder running under the bed the whole time.’

‘Then you did say those things. They’re disgusting, insupportable.’ She shuddered. ‘You realize your career’s finished? You’ll be kicked out of the party. I hope you’ve already resigned from Venturer. And I suppose Saturday’s instalment will be all about your touching designs on Taggie O’Hara. How the great rake was reformed and approached his waiting bride with a tenderness which was all the more careful, the more considerate because he knew the depths of her apprehension – Ker-rist!’ Her voice rose to a screech.

Rupert looked at her incredulously. Expecting the exocet from the front, he was suddenly being torpedoed from underneath.

‘You’re in love with her, aren’t you?’ said Cameron.

Rupert looked across the valley at his white fields. He’d always seen them as arms protecting Taggie. Now they seemed like a great predatory polar bear, crushing The Priory to death.

He turned back to Cameron.

‘OK,’ he said flatly, ‘I do love her. If I’m honest, I’ve loved her ever since New Year’s Eve, probably long before that. I’m desperately sorry, I know I’ve dealt you a marked card. I’m much too fond of you to kid you along any longer, just for the sake of the franchise, that you and I are going to end up together.’

Cameron opened her mouth to yell at him, but Rupert raised his hand for a second’s more silence.

‘I didn’t know a thing about these memoirs coming out – not that you’d want me anyway after reading them – but I want you to know that I was intending to level with you today about Taggie.’

For a second Cameron seemed to sway with frenzy, like a viper about to strike, then she screamed: ‘You won’t get her. Declan knows about it too, and there’s no way he’ll let you ever get your filthy depraved hands on his darling daughter.’

‘I know there isn’t,’ said Rupert. ‘This –’ he picked up the
Scorpion
and wearily dropped it in the wastepaper basket – ‘has finally done for us.’

‘Serve you fucking right,’ yelled Cameron. ‘I’m getting out of here, and I never want to see you again.’

She rushed downstairs out of the front door, then kicked and punched her way through the waiting journalists, sending several of them leaping for safety as the Lotus stormed down the drive.

‘Nice quiet girl,’ said the
Mail on Sunday
, picking himself out of the snow.

Arriving at Green Lawns, Rupert found Freddie and Declan desperately trying to salvage the IBA meeting. As a result of Rupert’s memoirs, two of the major financial backers had pulled out and Professor Graystock had resigned. As Rupert went into Freddie’s study, the Bishop rang up:

‘I’m afraid in the light of Rupert Campbell-Black’s quite appalling revelations, I shall have to withdraw my support for the Venturer bid.’

‘You can’t,’ said Freddie, aghast. ‘The meeting’s tomorrow morning. Your not being there will really tip the scales. I fort the Church of England were supposed to forgive sinners.’

‘I have to set a good example to my flock,’ said the Bishop and rang off.

‘Lily-livered bastard,’ said Freddie furiously. ‘We’re well shot of ’im.’

‘He’d have impressed the IBA,’ said Declan bleakly, who couldn’t look Rupert in the eye. Was it because of Taggie or the memoirs?

‘Then I must resign,’ said Rupert. ‘It’s the only honourable thing to do.’

‘No, you won’t,’ said Freddie. ‘It don’t add up. Beattie Johnson was a slut, but she ’ad a good ’eart. I don’t fink she’d ’ave written those rings wivout considerable financial inducement. Seb Burrows has got nuffink to do at the moment. I’m going to put him on to the story and see what he can dig up. And can’t we slap an injunction on the
Scorpioni
?’

Rupert shook his head wearily. ‘I wish we could, but I’m afraid it’s all true. Although, it’s appallingly slanted. The only wrong thing is that Billy and I aren’t gay. Seven-eighths of it was never, never meant for publication, but she was such a fucking good listener, and you know I can never resist making people laugh. We were together for two years, for Christ’s sake.’

‘How’s Cameron taken it?’ asked Declan harshly. ‘She was in a terrible state last night. Thinks you and she are kaput.’

Rupert slumped on the sofa, putting his head in his hands.

‘We are. I’ve just told her.’

Declan lost his temper. It was like an earthquake and a volcano erupting at the same time.

‘Can’t you ever keep your fucking trap shut? First you tell everything to Beattie Johnson, then you have to give Cameron the boot. Don’t you realize this’ll screw up any final chance we have of getting the franchise? No Bishop, no professor, no financial backing, no Cameron – she’ll bolt straight back to Tony and tell him everything she hasn’t told him already.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Rupert looked up, the bloodshot eyes suddenly alert.

‘Haven’t you read
The Times
yet?’

‘Bas muttered something about it last night, but I forgot to read it.’

‘Cameron leaked all our plans to Tony on Tuesday.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘We put a private detective on to Tony. They spent an hour and a half together in the Royal Garden. ‘

‘So?’ said Rupert. ‘They were having a bunk-up. Cameron’s straight, I swear it.’

‘So do I,’ said Freddie.

‘Well, it’s purely academic now, since Rupert has seen fit to kick her out.’

‘I’m sorry, Declan.’

‘It’s not bloody good enough.’

Unshaven, putty-coloured, his shirt on its second day, his suit crumpled, Rupert looked so desolate and so ill, slumped on the sofa, that Freddie went over and put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Could ’appen to anyone. You’ll come out of it.’

‘Venturer won’t. I’ve done for the lot of you.’

At that moment Valerie marched in.

‘I’ve read every word of your disgusting memoirs,’ she screeched. ‘I don’t want you in the house. You might give Wayne or even Fred-Fred some horrid disease.’

‘Shut up,’ snapped Freddie. ‘He’s ’ad enough punishment. Now just bugger off and bring us some black coffee.’

Feeling he was such an irritant to Declan, Rupert left soon after that. Holing up in Bas’s flat, he spent the rest of a nightmare day on the telephone, trying to resign from the party, from his constituency and from the International Olympics Committee. To his frustration no one would accept. The Leader of the Opposition, for example, was amazingly sanguine:

‘Wait until the franchises have been awarded,’ she said. ‘That tramp Beattie Johnson took me to the cleaners just before I became leader – slanted the whole interview. Jolly nearly cost me the job. The Amanda Hamilton business is unfortunate, I grant you, but Rollo’s only Shadow Foreign Secretary at the moment, and you haven’t done anything illegal. There’s been absolutely no security leak, and it isn’t as though you were married when you were in office. Just hang on a bit.’

Amanda Hamilton, on the other hand, was absolutely gibbering with anger when Rupert rang her. Rollo was intending to sue, she said.

Malise Gordon, by contrast, was icy cold with rage that Helen’s name had been dragged into it.

‘I’m not excusing what’s happened,’ said Rupert, ‘but I was very raw when Helen left me. Beattie lived with me for two years. Naturally I confided in her about my marriage, it never entered my head she’d shop me. None of the stuff that’s been printed was intended for the memoirs. Will you tell Helen how desperately sorry I am? I did tell Beattie hundreds of good things about her, which she conveniently forgot to put in.’

‘I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort to Helen,’ said Malise acidly.

‘Look, I’m going abroad immediately after the IBA meeting tomorrow,’ said Rupert. ‘I won’t be back for Christmas. I must see the children before I go.’

‘I don’t think that’s at all a good idea,’ said Malise crushingly, ‘and I know Helen won’t either. Tab’s far too young to understand, and I doubt if Marcus will ever speak to you again after the things you said about his mother. The press are howling round the place; your presence would only exacerbate things. Just bugger off and leave us all alone.’

‘I must explain —’ just for a second Rupert’s voice faltered – ‘that whatever’s happened, I still love them. For Christ’s sake, Malise.’

‘You can always write,’ said Malise, and hung up.

Rupert sat slumped for a long time. Then he borrowed two hundred pounds in cash from Basil’s till, a piece of writing paper and an envelope.

‘
Darling Taggie
,’ he wrote, ‘
I’m sorry I was bloody the last two times we met. Of course we’re still friends. One day you’ll find some nice boy who’s worthy of you, and he’ll be the luckiest sod in the world. In the meantime could you spend the enclosed on Christmas presents for Marcus and Tab. You’ll know instinctively what they’d like. Thank you for everything. God bless you . . . Rupert.
’

Shoving the cash and the letter in an envelope, he gave it to Bas to deliver to The Priory.

Towards nightfall, over at Green Lawns, Freddie and Declan were just trying to prevent another backer pulling out when the private detective rang on another line. He had something too important to tell them over the telephone. He’d be straight round. He turned out, to Declan’s surprise, not to be some seedy unfrocked cop in a dirty mac, but a delightfully understated, mouse-haired young Wykehamist with an innocent pink and white face. Nor did he beat about anyone’s bush.

‘Tony Baddingham spent yesterday afternoon in a Stow-in-the-Wold motel with a woman. I’ve got pictures of them arriving separately and then leaving together, and exchanging kisses in the car park.’

He threw the pictures down on the table. Fascinated, Freddie and Declan got up to have a look. In the first photograph the woman had her black coat collar turned up and was wearing a black beret, dark glasses and her hair tied back. In the second, coming out of the motel, her coat was unbuttoned, she was laughing, holding the dark glasses and the beret in one hand, with her glorious red hair trailing down her back. In the third, she was kissing Tony in front of Taggie’s car.

‘Is this some kind of a joke?’ hissed Declan.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said the private detective. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Mr O’Hara. After they’d gone I talked to the receptionist. After I’d bunged her, she admitted they’d been there several times before. She showed me the register – they’d signed in as Mr and Mrs Jones. The girl remembered Mrs O’Hara because she was so beautiful.’

Declan started to shake. It was like seeing the first stroke of the woodcutter’s axe going into a great oak tree, thought Freddie.

‘But it was Bas, not Tony,’ muttered Declan.

‘Bas must have been a front,’ said Freddie.

‘Look how upset she was the other night when Taggie turned up with Bas,’ said Declan, frantically trying to convince himself.

‘That’s because she’s jealous of Taggie,’ said Freddie wisely. ‘It was only later she got really upset, which was when you told us you’d just seen Cameron with Tony – and she did know all about Dermot MacBride and the Shakespeare plays. ‘

‘I don’t believe it,’ muttered Declan. ‘She wouldn’t. I must find her.’ He stumbled towards the door.