Rivals (45 page)

Freddie’s methods were more direct. He invited half a dozen rich cronies to lunch in his board room and got Taggie up to London to do the cooking. With the boeuf en croute he produced a claret of such vintage and venerability that a one-minute silence was preserved as the first glass was drunk.

‘Christ, that’s good,’ said the Chief Executive of Oxford Motors.

Freddie tipped back his chair, his red-gold curls on end, his merry grey eyes sparkling: ‘I can only afford to drink wine like this once a year,’ he said, ‘but I’d like to be able to drink it every day, and that’s where all you gentlemen come in.’

By the end of lunch, having bandied the names of Marti Gluckstein, Rupert and Declan around the table, Freddie was well on the way to raising the eight million.

Jubilant, he travelled back to Gloucestershire by train and, seeing a plump lady walking down the platform, recognized Lizzie Vereker and whisked her into a first-class carriage. His mood of euphoria, he soon discovered, was matched by Lizzie’s. Thanks to a wonderful new nanny, who seemed impervious to James’s advances, she’d finished and delivered her new novel and the publishers loved it. It was an excuse for her to buy him an enormous drink, she said, but she didn’t know if British Railways stocked Bacardi and Coke.

‘Leave it to me,’ said Freddie, and came back with two half-bottles of Moët.

‘How’s James?’ he asked, as the train whizzed through Slough.

‘Frightfully cross,’ said Lizzie. ‘People keep ringing him up asking for Declan’s home number because they want him to join their consortiums. Have you seen Declan?’

‘No,’ lied Freddie, and wished he didn’t have to. Looking at Lizzie’s round, smiling face and capacious cashmere bosom, Freddie couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be if Lizzie joined Venturer. She had just the right emollient quality to keep everyone happy. She had three novels under her belt and lived in the area. He gave her a lift home. Although the trees were still leafless, the wild garlic and the dog mercury were sweeping like a great emerald-green tide over the floor of the woods.

‘Oh I love Spring,’ sighed Lizzie. ‘The bluebells will be out soon. I’ve only been away two days and it’s like missing “EastEnders”; you suddenly discover nature’s moved on another instalment without you.’

‘I know I shouldn’t ask,’ said Freddie as the red Jaguar pulled up outside her house, ‘but will you have lunch with me one day?’

‘I know I shouldn’t accept,’ said Lizzie, ‘but yes, please.’

Dropping in at The Priory on the way home, Freddie found Declan and Rupert in the library surrounded by tapes. Declan was busy writing the section of the application which would tear Corinium’s programmes to shreds.

He and Rupert were now watching a tape of ‘Cotswold Round-Up’. Sarah was interviewing some old lady who couldn’t pay her gas bill and James was sitting on the pink sofa looking caring.

‘Christ, she’s pretty,’ said Declan. ‘She’d be dazzling if she were properly produced. We do need some more women.’

‘No, no, no, no,’ said Rupert. ‘She really is lightweight.’

‘What would you feel about Lizzie Vereker?’ said Freddie, his voice thickening.

‘Good idea,’ said Declan. ‘She writes very well.’

‘And she’s so sweet,’ said Rupert, ‘and it would infuriate James.’

‘And she lives in the area,’ they all chorused.

‘Let’s recruit her later in the year,’ said Declan. ‘She’s too near to Tony and I really don’t want him to know what we’re up to before the applications go in.’

RIVALS

On the second Monday in April, Ursula, who was still working for Declan, although he could ill afford her salary, was due to lunch with her old friend Joyce Madden.

‘See if you can find out Tony’s whereabouts next weekend,’ Rupert had asked her on the telephone beforehand.

Ursula, who loved conspiracy, came back from lunch and half a bottle of Sauternes bustling with excitement, and rang Rupert.

‘Joyce told me in the strictest confidence that Tony and Cameron are off on a naughty to Madrid this weekend. Cameron’s flying out on Friday afternoon. Evidently she wants some peace to polish Corinium’s application before it goes off to the IBA. Tony’s giving a party at The Falconry on Friday night because it’s Badminton weekend and a nice excuse to ask all his posh friends paid for by Corinium. Then he’s flying to Madrid on Saturday lunchtime. They’re staying in the same hotel and on Sunday night Cameron’s picking up some award for “Four Men went to Mow”. They’re both flying home on separate planes on Monday.’

‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant,’ said Rupert. ‘Could you bear at this stage not to mention this to Declan?’

Later in the day Rupert went to a reception to welcome some visiting Russian gymnasts, during which they gave a demonstration of their skills. Watching them go into incredibly graceful contortions on parallel bar and rug, Rupert wondered whether Cameron Cook was as supple and agile as that in bed. How the hell was he to get her on her own to launch his attack? Then inspiration struck. The moment the party was over he beetled out to his Government car and rang his friend the handsome Duke, who lived at Badminton.

‘Could you do me a great favour?’

‘Depends how great,’ said the Duke.

‘You’ve got the Princess staying next weekend, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you possibly ask Tony and Monica Baddingham to dinner on Saturday night?’

‘Do I have to? I don’t mind Monica, but he’s such a ghastly snob.’

‘I’ll knock half a grand off that Irish mare.’

‘Oh, all right then.’

‘I’m going away this weekend,’ Rupert told Gerald Middleton next morning as they went through the diary. ‘I bumped into the Secretary of State for Scotland last night, who reminded me that Hearts are playing Madrid on Saturday, and it seemed wrong that no one from our department was going.’

Gerald raised his eyebrow.

‘They’re the only British team in the semi-final,’ said Rupert blandly.

‘You’re meant to be chairing a meeting opposing the Swindon/Gloucester motorway in Gloucester on Friday night,’ said Gerald, who didn’t approve of dates being broken.

‘I know. Ring them and say I’m terribly sorry. They have my full support, but they’ll have to get someone else. And can you get me a couple of presents for the wives of the British Ambassador and the Spanish Minister for Sport?’

‘I hope you’re not overdoing things,’ said Gerald reprovingly. ‘You’ve lost an awful lot of weight recently. Don’t forget you’ve got a second appointment with Doctor Benson tomorrow.’

Gerald was very worried. Rupert had been edgy for the last month, which could at first be put down to his not drinking, but this weekend he’d been really bad-tempered and two trips to the doctor in three days seemed ominous, particularly when you had screwed around as much as Rupert.

Rupert, however, rolled up at The Priory in the highest spirits the following evening to find Declan still surrounded by tapes and Basil Baddingham sitting on the edge of his desk drinking a Bloody Mary and discussing tactics.

‘I was just telling Declan that I’ve found you a possible building in case Tony won’t let us buy the existing Corinium studios,’ said Bas. ‘Cotchester Hall’s coming on to the market in November. Why are you looking so bloody pleased with yourself?’

Rupert waved a piece of paper in front of them.

‘I had an AIDS test this week and I’m clear.’

‘Christ,’ said Bas, examining it. ‘Is there no justice in the world?’

‘How long did it take you to get the results?’ asked Declan.

‘Forty-eight hours,’ said Rupert, ‘but I had to bung them.’

‘I’d be far too frightened to go,’ said Bas.

‘I came to tell you,’ said Rupert, retrieving his piece of paper, ‘that I’m going away for the weekend.’

‘But we’ve got our first Venturer meeting on Sunday,’ protested Declan. ‘Everyone’s coming – even Harold White and Marti Gluckstein.’

‘Christ, he’s never been to the country in his life,’ said Rupert. Then, hurriedly remembering the cottage he was supposed to be buying for Marti, asked, ‘Where are you having it, at the Bar Sinister?’

‘Too close to Tone,’ said Bas. ‘Freddie’s earmarked a fantastic little pub in the middle of Salisbury Plain which no one knows and which has amazing food. The landlord just runs it for fun.’

Declan was still looking disapproving. ‘You ought to be there. Meetings are essential at this stage to establish some kind of
esprit de corps.
And we’ll all be tossing ideas around.’

‘You know I never have any,’ said Rupert.

‘I thought you were chairing the motorway meeting,’ said Bas.

‘Had to cancel it,’ said Rupert. ‘If I don’t spend more time in my constituency other than on Venturer business, they’re going to drop me.’

‘Burke only visited his constituency once in six years,’ said Declan.

Rupert laughed. ‘He wasn’t such a berk then.’

‘Where
are
you going?’ asked Bas.

‘To Madrid to watch some soccer.’

‘Balls,’ said Bas. ‘You’re up to something.’

‘I need a break,’ said Rupert. ‘Man cannot live by bread alone; he needs crumpet.’

There is a moment every Spring when even the most dedicated workaholic is overwhelmed by restlessness and longs to cast clouts and wander hand in hand with a new love through the burgeoning countryside. Cameron Cook was no exception. The weather had suddenly turned so warm as she packed for Madrid on Friday morning that she was able to wander naked round her bedroom with the smell of newly mown grass drifting in through the wide-open windows. The apple trees at the bottom of her backyard were still bare, but the long grass round their gnarled grey trunks was filled with bright blue cillas, polyanthus and narcissi. Beyond the fence two mallard had nested in the rushes on the edge of the water meadows, and in the distance the willows, bowed over the river, were fringed with palest green.

Although Cameron had read that there was a heatwave in Madrid, it wouldn’t catch her on the hop. She had spent several hours a week over the last month on the sun bed, baking her body to that dark smooth gold that Tony loved. She was in great shape too; her coach at the gym last night had told her that, apart from a few professional athletes, her body was the most perfect and finely tuned he had ever handled. She admired it every time she passed the long mirror. Yet only yesterday Tony had shattered her confidence once again.

In order to discuss some change in the running order, she had barged into Sarah Stratton’s dressing-room yesterday afternoon and found her sharing a bottle of champagne with Tony. Sarah’s gold hair was prosaically in rollers and she was sitting in a dove-grey silk petticoat which showed off her cleavage and had got rucked up to show a strip of flesh between the top of her dove-grey silk French knickers and her pale grey stockings. She was actually perfectly decently dressed and Tony was leaning against the wall six feet away from her, but there was something about the way they stopped talking when Cameron came in. Normally Cameron would have bawled Sarah out for drinking before a programme, but she couldn’t with Tony countenancing it. Instead she had a row with Tony after work.

Tony was quite unrepentant.

‘Poor darling Sarah, she was a bit nervous about interviewing the head of the Chamber of Commerce, in case it influenced the franchise. After all they are an important pressure group. She was asking my advice on her best line of questioning. Her great strength,’ he went on, with a nasty smile, ‘is that she’s not afraid to show a man she’s vulnerable, and she is so deliciously feminine.’

‘And I’m not, I suppose?’

Tony shrugged and ruffled her spiky hair.

‘No one could call you feminine, darling.’

So this morning, in a rage, Cameron, who had never worn baby-doll nighties or anything underneath her clothes other than the briefest bikini pants, rushed out and spent a fortune on matching underwear and nightgowns and negligées.

In other more subtle ways her self-confidence had been eroded recently. Ironically, since Tony had made her Programme Controller, a role she’d coveted for so long, she’d become less secure, because she spent so much time in meetings and was doing less and less of the thing she was really good at – making programmes. All the prizes she was now winning were for work done last year. The new series of ‘Four Men went to Mow’, starting next week, would largely be produced, directed and re-written by other people. Having clawed her way to the top, she realized, as many men had realized before her, that the view from there wasn’t that great; in fact it was bloody scary. Finally, she was aware that by flexing her muscles in the office, in bed and in the gym, she was frightening guys off. In the last three years Patrick and Tony were the only ones who’d fallen in love with her, and Tony was showing every sign of getting bored.

Out on the water meadows and the cathedral close she could see office workers in shirt sleeves and cotton dresses, many of them probably from Corinium, sneaking out to early lunches, wandering arm in arm, carrying bottles to drink under the willows.

She glanced at the status symbols littered in ludicrously expensive confusion over her bed – the Charles Jourdan shoes, the Hermés scarves, the Filofax, the Rayban shades, the huge Rolex watch, the backless kingfisher-blue Jasper Conran for Sunday night’s presentation – what was the point of all these spiralist trappings if there was no one to share them with? Her mood of despair lasted all the way to Madrid.

There, however, the black limo that met her at the airport and the splendour of her magnificent suite in a hotel paid for by the Spanish television authorities, gradually cheered her up.

There were two bedrooms in the suite, each with two beds, a huge living-room stuffed with antiques and lit by huge chandeliers, and an enormous bathroom with soft and hard loo paper, a hair dryer and two beautiful white towelling dressing-gowns. There was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and a huge basket of fruit with pomegranates, persimmons and apples as big as grapefruit. Pink carnations floated in the finger bowls; there were flowers in every room to match the pale pink walls, and silver trays of chocolates. And this was just her suite. Tony’s suite next door was identical.