Rivals (89 page)

Lady Gosling dropped her eyes first.

Glancing at the clock on the wall, Cameron could see they’d been in there an hour and a half. Was that a good sign, or did the IBA merely want to prove Venturer’s inferiority beyond doubt? Knowing nothing about Maud’s affair with Tony, she had also realized there was something seriously wrong with Declan. He hadn’t contributed to the discussion at all. By now he ought to be revving up for his final peroration, tearing Corinium limb from limousine, but he was saying nothing.

She looked down the row, at Janey and Billy radiating panache and glamour and high spirits when she knew how desperately broke they were, at Charles who had no future if Venturer went down, at Georgie, Sally and Harold, who’d certainly jeopardized their careers, at Henry dreaming of bosoms and badgers, at Wesley who’d flown thousands of miles to support them and probably jeopardized his test career as well, at Rupert who, despite the devastating blows that had been dealt him that week, had performed so incredibly bravely, and back to Declan, who had taught her humanity. They were her friends, the people she most wanted to work with.

Lady Gosling looked at her watch, and poured herself a glass of Highland Spring. ‘Well, we’ve listened to you all, and studied your bulky application. Has anyone anything else to say?’

There was a long agonizing pause:

‘I have,’ said Cameron, getting to her feet, as slim and brave in her red suit as the young Portia.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, last week at one of the northern television stations a young Head of News hanged himself.’ She glanced along the row of shocked reproving faces. ‘Sure, we’ve all been fed the official story that he had domestic and financial problems. The truth was he couldn’t handle all the pressures in the run-up to the franchise awards. He was being so bullied to get so many different lobbies, local worthies, friends of his Managing Director on to his programme to impress you, the IBA, so that his lousy bosses could keep their franchise and go on making a fortune. This is a tragedy and a disgrace,’ went on Cameron fiercely, ‘and an appalling indictment on the whole IBA and ITV system. We in production should not feel we’ve got to put on worthy uplifting boring programmes every eight years in order to impress you and retain the franchise. We should make good programmes all the time.’

She turned, pointing to the framed document on the wall, giving the IBA its own coat of arms and motto: ‘Your motto is
Servire populo.
But you’re not serving the people if you’re encouraging the companies to make programmes that please you, which you feel the people ought to watch, rather than what they want to watch. I worked for Tony Baddingham for four years,’ she went on bitterly.

‘And produced some very good uplifting programmes that weren’t boring,’ said Lady Gosling dryly.

Cameron grinned. ‘
Touché.
’ Then instantly she became serious again. ‘But that was because Tony Baddingham was
inordinately
fond of me and gave me
carte blanche
to ride roughshod over all the staff, and also gave me an unlimited budget, while cutting the budgets of all other programmes to nothing. Morale at Corinium was and is absolutely rock bottom.

‘Declan O’Hara —’ she looked at Declan, pleading with him to glance up or react in some way – ‘is one of the all-time greats of television. But when he was at Corinium, he was very nearly broken by Tony, who forced him to interview people of total insignificance, big businessmen, local dignitaries, people whose influence he believed he needed to win the franchise. Fortunately Declan escaped and formed Venturer. I’ve spent the last two months working with him and learnt that you don’t need to terrorize people, or reduce them to hanging themselves, to make good programmes. Once you’ve got the authority, if you’ll forgive the pun, you get far more out of people by kindness and interest in their welfare.’

The Welsh judge put on his spectacles for a better look at Cameron. Really she was a most astonishingly attractive girl. She could read for the Bar if ever she got fed up with television.

‘ITV audience figures are plummeting,’ went on Cameron accusingly, ‘because so many of the programmes are so awful, and because most of the companies are run by accountants who aren’t prepared to take risks any more. Why spend ten million on a serial which may fail, when for peanuts you can buy a quiz from another company?

‘Venturer’s going to change all that. We’re going to revitalize ITV and not only make really good programmes right across the board, but also change the scheduling of the whole network so it’s based on an exact analysis of what the public wants. At the moment it is simply a ragbag of whatever happens to be lying around, or fits in with the resources of the contributing company. We know what difficulties lie ahead. We know we can’t produce profitable results if we have to make continually uplifting programmes. We’ll need your help, understanding and guidance all along the way. But I promise you, unlike Corinium, we are not April when we woo, and December when we wed. I’m sorry, I’ve gone on too long.’ She collapsed back into her chair, embarrassed.

It was some comfort that Rupert put his hand over hers with real pride.

‘Normally your chairman would sum up at this stage, but I think we’ve all heard quite enough about Venturer’s policy from Miss Cook,’ said Lady Gosling. ‘Thank you all for coming.’

After all the effort it was a very curt dismissal. Feeling utterly despondent, Venturer filed out of the room. Even worse, as they were smuggled out of the underground car park they went slap into the press, who were out in force clamouring to get a quote from Rupert about the memoirs. Fortunately they concentrated on getting pictures of him and didn’t notice the rest of the moles cringing inside the convoy of cars.

For want of anything better to do, they all went back to Freddie’s for a wake. On the way there, Janey, Billy and Freddie told Cameron about Declan and Maud.

‘But the IBA ought to be told,’ stormed Cameron. ‘Someone’s got to wise them up what an absolute bastard Tony is.’

‘You made a pretty good job of it just now,’ said Freddie. ‘And Declan won’t hear of it.’

As soon as he got to Freddie’s, Rupert took Cameron aside.

‘Thank you for turning up, sweetheart. You were absolutely marvellous.’

Cameron shrugged. ‘If you can get a gold with a dislocated shoulder, I can talk too much with a broken heart.’

‘Christ, I admire you.’

‘I’d so much rather you’d loved me,’ said Cameron sadly.

For a second Rupert lowered her dark glasses, and winced to see how red and swollen from crying her eyes were.

‘I’m so sorry, angel. You know you can stay on at Penscombe as long as you like. I won’t be there for the next few weeks.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked Cameron, suddenly frantic.

‘America, this afternoon. The only hope is to get the hell out of England until the dust settles.’

‘So you won’t be back for Christmas?’

Rupert shook his head wearily. ‘What Christmas?’

‘Or for the IBA verdict on the 15th?’

‘The result’s a foregone conclusion. Couldn’t you feel the tidal waves of disapproval and distaste emanating from those tweed bosoms throughout the interview? We haven’t a hope.’

‘Probably not,’ said Cameron, glancing at Declan who was now slumped in a chair, shivering uncontrollably with an untouched glass of whisky in his hand. ‘But Declan’s going to need a lot of support in the next few days.’

‘Not from me,’ said Rupert bitterly. ‘The best thing for all the O’Haras would be to have me out of their hair.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better be off.’

‘Can I ask you just one favour?’ said Cameron. ‘Could I possibly keep Blue?’

The doorbell rang and they both jumped thinking it might be Taggie. Freddie’s secretary answered it and the next moment a man marched into the room. For a second Cameron thought she was hallucinating, for it seemed as if the old Declan, the forceful, confident, aggressive, clear-eyed, suntanned Declan, whom she remembered so clearly that first day he arrived at Corinium, had just walked through the door. Then she realized it was Patrick, thickened out, weathered and bronzed from five months working on a sheep farm. He’d obviously come straight from the airport, and being Patrick, even in a family crisis, had bothered to buy duty free whisky and cigarettes. He’d need them both over the next few days.

Near to tears, Declan rose to his feet. Ignoring everyone else in the room, Patrick went over and put his arms round him.

‘It’s all right, Pa,’ he said gently, ‘I rang home first. Taggie told me about Mum. It was a terrible thing for her to do, but she had reasons. It’ll be all right. It’s you she loves. She’ll come back.’

He was like the father comforting the child.

‘She sabotaged the franchise,’ groaned Declan, ‘and it was all my fault.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Patrick. ‘The responsibility for that lies elsewhere.’

He let go of Declan and turned towards Rupert, his face hardening. ‘You deliberately set out to seduce Cameron because you wanted her on Venturer’s side, didn’t you? Well that’s for fucking
her
up.’ The next moment he’d smashed his fist into Rupert’s right jaw and, as Rupert reeled sideways, caught totally by surprise, Patrick hit him again on the right eye with his other fist. ‘And that’s for fucking up Taggie,’ he added, as Rupert crashed to the ground.

In the press over the weekend there was endless speculation as to which of the wronged husbands named in Rupert’s bonk-statement (as the memoirs were now known), had given Rupert the black eye.

RIVALS

The next two weeks were terrible for Venturer. Deeply guilty that his utter failure to pull himself together at the meeting had finally cost them the franchise, Declan went home to Penscombe. Taggie and Patrick made sure he was never alone, as he seemed to sink deeper and deeper into depression, constantly vacillating between loathing Maud for betraying him and longing to have her back. There was no word from her; she seemed to have totally vanished.

Patrick, displaying patience and understanding way beyond his years, spent hours talking to his father: ‘Taggie said Mum was absolutely gibbering with terror before
The Merry Widow.
It was such a colossal distance from obscurity back to the limelight. A little amateur production perhaps to you, but to her it wasn’t just an extra step to cross the Frogsmore, but a vast leap over a five-hundred-foot-deep ravine. She needed you so desperately to witness her triumph or catch her if she fell.’

‘I know,’ groaned Declan. ‘Because I always had to fight so hard to keep her, I never realized how much she needed me.’

‘And you know she lives any part she plays. In her head she’s now become poor bullied Nora in
A Doll’s House
, marching out with a slammed door on an insensitive tyrannical husband. She wanted to hit back, to slam the door on your figures.

‘And finally you mustn’t underestimate the influence of Tony Baddingham. I know the effect he had on Cameron. He is pure Iago. He only had to point out how brilliant, beautiful and sexually voracious Cameron was; how you were spending more and more time with her; how could the two of you
not
be having an affair? You know what an imagination Mum has. This was even more immediate than P. D. James. Imagine, too, the appalling things he must have said about you, and finally the escape from poverty he offered her: new dresses, new jewels, furs, no more brown envelopes, or creditors at the gate, even warmth.’ Patrick shivered. After the Australian summer The Priory central heating left a great deal to be desired. ‘And he was around all the time, and you were away, or preoccupied with the franchise or Yeats, and Mum was probably turned on because the whole thing was so utterly
verboten.
All he had to do was to switch on his electric carving knife, dip it in washing-up machine powder and turn it in the wound.’

Declan winced: ‘I can understand all that, but deliberately to hand over all our secrets.’

‘She may not have done,’ said Patrick. ‘Taggie was out a lot cooking. Tony probably came to the house. The plans were on your desk. Your writing isn’t
that
indecipherable.’

‘D’you think I should go round to The Falconry and kill him?’

Patrick gave a wintry smile. ‘I wouldn’t. You know how Lady Gosling abhors violence.’

Taggie, who was kept enormously busy cooking for parties and filling up people’s deep freezes for Christmas, made heroic attempts to be cheerful, but she worried Patrick far more than Declan. Never one to grumble, she refused to discuss Rupert, but Patrick knew she was bleeding to death inside.

Outside, the weather was frantically warmer, the snow thawed in patches, leaving fantastic shapes, a sea horse there, a camel here. All down the valley the streams that tumbled into the Frogsmore were still frozen into dirty grey glaciers. Wandering numbly through the fields with the dogs, Taggie only noticed the flattened tufts of thick tawny grass sticking up through the snow, like the heads of a thousand Ruperts slain in battle.

‘
Too long a sacrifice
,’ quoted Patrick bitterly, thinking too of his own situation, ‘
can make a stone of the heart
.’

Cameron, mercifully, was still very busy editing Yeats (Declan had lost all interest in the project), and setting up the programme on stepmothers which Channel Four had commissioned. She popped over on several occasions to cheer Declan up, but managed to avoid times when Patrick was at home. Patrick didn’t know if she’d gone back to Tony, or whether Tony was looking after his mother. He and Taggie decided it would be better to do nothing until after the franchise results were announced.

Sunday, 15th December was D-Day. The form was that from nine o’clock onwards, in an atmosphere of high drama and secrecy, the existing managing directors of all the commercial television companies would roll up at the IBA in their limos at quarter of an hour intervals. Driving past the battalions of reporters, photographers and camera crews, they would be ushered once again into the building from the underground car park and be whizzed up in the lift to yet another empty office. Here, not unlike the suitors in
The Merchant of Venice
, they would be handed a sealed envelope from Lady Gosling and then be left alone to open it and learn if they had held onto their franchise, or whether, as in some instances, they had to merge with their rivals. Allowed a few minutes to digest this information, they would then be summoned to Lady Gosling’s office for a brief word of congratulation or commiseration. Afterwards they would leave the building by the back door or by the front, having sworn not to reveal a word of the results to the press. After all the existing contractors had been seen, the contenders, who hoped to depose them, would come in one by one after lunch and endure the same procedure.