Rivals (58 page)

For a hideous moment at the beginning of the meeting it looked as though no one was going to ask any questions. Then a man in spectacles got up and grumbled about the reception in Gloucester. Corinium’s Chief Engineer got up to answer him, and the stupor produced by engineers at public meetings allowed everyone time to collect their thoughts.

More straightforward complaints then followed from local councillors who had not yet been interviewed by James on ‘Cotswold Round-Up’ that coverage in their area was pitiful.

Mrs Makepiece, James’s daily, then rose to her feet, and, disclaiming any connection with Corinium, said ‘Cotswold Round-Up’ was the best programme on telly, and why couldn’t it be on seven days a week. This was greeted by bellows of ‘Rubbish’ and ‘Offside’ from Taggie’s rugger players.

One of the Corinium shop stewards, who’d just screwed a two-thousand-pound rise out of Tony for all his members, as well as a fat bribe for himself, shouted from the back that he wouldn’t trust Declan O’Hara’s mob further than he could throw them. His claim that industrial relations at Corinium were second to none, however, were greeted by cries of ‘si-down’ from all over the hall.

‘As Corinium fork out immediately whatever the unions demand and most of the technicians earn more than the Prime Minister, I should think industrial relations are second to none,’ yelled Bas, to loud cheers from the Venturer supporters.

The Chairman of Chipping Sodbury’s WI then rose to her feet and said in a ringing voice that her institute was sick to the teeth of news about Cotchester and nothing about Chipping Sodbury.

Remembering ‘Miss Corinium Television’, Rupert caught Declan’s eye. ‘She’s forgotten Miss Chipping Sodbury’s tits,’ he whispered across Taggie.

Both men started to shake with laughter, until quelled by a cold look from Lady Gosling.

Tony rose to reply. ‘I can assure you, madam,’ he said smoothly, ‘that, by an extraordinary coincidence, “Cotswold Round-Up” is due to visit Chipping Sodbury later this week.’

‘Are we?’ said James to Sarah, looking startled.

‘In fact,’ Tony went on warmly, ‘we have super plans for the entire Cotswold area.’

‘You’ve been here eight years. Why haven’t we seen any of them?’ bellowed Taggie’s headmaster.

More cheers all round were counterpointed by snores from Mrs Makepiece.

‘I’ve studied both Venturer’s and Corinium’s applications at the public library,’ went on Taggie’s headmaster, ‘and Venturer’s programme plans seem infinitely more imaginative. What I would like to ask Lord Baddingham is how much have his grandiose new plans for a multi-million-pound studio, for slots for every possible minority group, for cultural improvement and for spectacular entertainment been spawned by editorial inspiration or desire to hang on to his very lucrative franchise?’

Tony was about to rise and shout back over the deafening cheers, but James was too quick for him. ‘James Vereker, “Cotswold Round-Up”,’ he announced, getting to his feet and turning sideways so he could be recognized both by the platform and the floor.

‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’ catcalled Taggie’s rugger captain.

‘As anchorman of “Cotswold Round-Up,” said James, ‘I know I speak for each and everyone of us at Corinium from Tony Baddingham downward when I say that Corinium’s ethos can be summed up in two words.’

‘Bloody terrible,’ said Taggie’s rugger captain, to screams of laughter.

‘Two little words —’ James ploughed on – ‘Corinium cares.’

‘The only fing Tony Baddingham cares abart is making a fast buck,’ shouted Freddie, to more deafening cheers.

Mrs Makepiece snored so loudly that she woke herself up. ‘Let’s get up a partition,’ she said loudly.

Cameron knew she ought to stand up and defend Corinium, but she didn’t relish getting ripped apart by Declan. She was saved by the Women-in-Broadcasting lobby, who all had moustaches and who complained that there weren’t enough women in any of the consortiums. Lady Gosling nodded in agreement, and made notes.

The meeting droned on. Wesley Emerson had had a hard day in the field. No one but Rupert and Bas realized that each time his noble head nodded onto his right buttonhole he was taking a long suck of rum from a straw to Rupert’s hip flask in his breast pocket.

Outside in Cotchester Park, the lime trees were in flower; their sweet delicate scent, stronger after the downpour, drifted in through the open window. Cameron watched the house martins swooping after insects, flashing their white bellies. The tennis courts were packed with people playing vigorous Wimbledon-inspired tennis. In a week or so they’d revert to their usual patball. She glanced surreptitiously across at Rupert, who was sitting next to that drip Taggie, who (whatever Rupert said to the contrary) had a thumping crush on him.

Nothing except for the occasional yawn, not even a glance in her direction, betrayed the fact that Rupert had left her bed at six o’clock that morning. Cameron wondered sometimes if she’d imagined the whole thing. She was so deep in thought, she had to be nudged in the ribs by Seb to answer a question from a pale girl from Gay Lib as to whether the lesbian shepherdess who’d appeared briefly in the last series of ‘Four Men went to Mow’ would appear in the next one.

As Cameron sat down, the Chairman from Chipping Sodbury’s WI returned to the attack. ‘Nothing that comes from Corinium TV,’ she said, ‘is truly regional. Even Dorothy Dove speaks with a London accent.’

Another rabble-rouser, again heavily bunged by Tony, then rose to his feet.

‘While we’re on the subject of accents,’ he sneered, ‘in the first week of July four people were brutally butchered by the IRA. Do we really want an Irishman, namely one Declan O’Hara, bearing in mind his left-wing attitudes and the subversive nature of many of his programmes, to be the Chief Executive of an English television company?’

‘Out of order,’ screamed the Venturer contingent.

‘Offside, put it in straight,’ roared the rugger players.

Declan, who’d gone white, was just about to answer.

‘Careful,’ whispered Rupert.

‘I’d like the speaker to withdraw that remark,’ said Lady Gosling frostily. ‘Next question, please.’

The Clean-Up Television Campaign, headed by the Archdeacon, then started slamming sex and violence, followed by the Bishop of Cotchester who said how concerned he was about his flock, and that he would be working with Venturer to reduce not only sex and violence, but the very widespread blasphemy on television. He was just getting into his stride when Henry Hampshire’s ancient gardener staggered to his feet.

‘I like to go to bed very early,’ he grumbled. ‘I do wish Corinium wouldn’t put all those sexy fil-lums on so late at night, because I and the missus can never stay awake to watch them.’

Everyone roared with laughter, including Lady Gosling, who then clapped her hands and said it was with great regret that she had to bring this very stimulating meeting to a close as they were running out of time. They would end, she added, with a seven-minute sales pitch from each of the three contenders.

Tony rose first, deliberately turning his back on Venturer and talking half to the platform and half to the audience.

‘Good evening,’ he began suavely. ‘I am the Chief Executive of – er —’ he glanced down at his notes and everyone laughed – ‘Corinium Television. We have noted,’ he went on, ‘the very perceptive and instructive points raised tonight, and, although we don’t agree with all of them, anyone who would like a further answer to his – or indeed, her —’ he smiled broadly – ‘question, please write to me personally.’

‘Wanker,’ muttered Rupert under his breath. He folded his arms belligerently and, with the hand that was hidden, fought a violent urge to caress the side of Taggie’s left breast which swelled so seductively beneath her violet dress. She looked so ravishing this evening, and she’d done so well to get all those strange but incredibly influential people to the meeting.

Firmly clenching his hand away from Taggie, he looked across at Cameron, who was gazing moodily into space with a kind of deadpan, terrorist truculence. She reminded him of the girl grooms he used to pull in the old days. He desperately wanted a fuck, but he wouldn’t get Cameron tonight. Tony, overexcited by the meeting, would no doubt take advantage of that release. Rupert was finding the enforced celibacy more and more trying, and, bloody hell, what was Bas doing pulling Janey? It seemed as though he was the only person in the world behaving himself.

Having finished a rousing spiel about Corinium’s long and honourable record, Tony was now paying tribute to ‘the thriving, creative community’ he had the privilege to lead. ‘We are aware, Ladies and Gentlemen, that there is life west of Harrods, our hearts are not in “Dallas”, nor is our HQ in London. Our company is run by people from the region, who have a special place in the Cotswolds and, indeed, in West Country life. Corinium is its own man here. We will be biased, we will fight for the West, we are pledged to serve the whole community. Above all we care.’

He sat down to moderate cheers. Then it was Mid-West’s turn.

A fat man with straggly white hair staggered to his feet and then took ages to find his notes. ‘That’s obviously the geography master who never found his way to London,’ whispered Rupert to Taggie.

‘I am deeply honoured,’ began the fat man.

‘Name, name,’ yelled the audience.

‘My name is Cedric Bonnington,’ he mumbled. ‘I hope to be Chairman of Mid-West Television.’

‘Well, don’t be bashful, speak up,’ shouted Tony’s rabble-rouser.

Sadly, Cedric didn’t. In a low mumble he laboriously read out that he was very interested in all the fascinating points that had been made by the floor.

‘I cannot reveal who our backers are,’ he droned on, ‘but very substantial funds will be available should the very talented group, whose names I also cannot divulge at this stage, win the franchise.’

‘He’ll probably get it,’ said Georgie Baines to Seb Burrows.

‘What about women?’ yelled the Women-in-Broadcasting lobby.

Cedric consulted his notes. The company’s Programme Controller, whose name he also couldn’t divulge, he said, would be a woman of the widest experience.

‘Madame Cyn,’ yelled Rupert.

‘Mary Whitehouse,’ said Tony’s shop steward.

The audience waited for more exciting revelations, and, when none materialized, egged on by the Corinium consortium, who’d all got to their feet, started to drift away. It was almost dark outside; the pubs beckoned.

‘No one’s going to stay and listen to Daddy,’ said Taggie in anguish, and, as Declan got up to speak, people were swarming out into the High Street.

‘I’d like first to answer the speaker who questioned the right of an Irishman to run an English television company,’ he began softly. ‘As much right perhaps as that great Irishman, the Duke of Wellington, to command a British army.’

He spoke without notes. As people poured back into the hall again, the deep soft husky voice carried easily round the hall.

‘I am proud to be Irish,’ he went on, ‘and, to echo the words of another great Irish patriot, Irwin Cobb, I too had an ancestor who was out with the pikes in ’98. He was captured by the English and tried for treason. They hanged him by the neck until he was dead, but his soul goes marching on, transmitting to his descendants, of whom I am proud to be one, the desire to fight against tyranny whenever I come across it. I also love and honour British television. It is the best in the world. That’s why I and so many of my countrymen – Eamonn Andrews, Terry Wogan, Robert Kee, Frank Delaney, Dave Allen, Henry Kelly, Patrick Dromgoole, Gloria Hunniford – are over here, learning from it and, I hope, contributing to it.

‘But we still go on fighting tyranny and oppression whenever we find it. I found it in the few months I worked for Corinium. That’s why I walked out, and why, with my English friends —’ he turned and smiled briefly at the Venturer consortium – ‘I have put in a bid to oust Lord Baddingham.’

He then proceeded to carve up Tony and tear Corinium’s boring sycophantic programmes to shreds. Only at the end did be briefly outline how Venturer would be different, how they would truly both represent the area and foster local talent. ‘I would like all great artists of the future to be able to say they had their first chance at Venturer.’

The audience stood up and cheered him for nearly three minutes. Stony-faced, Tony strode out of the hall. Cameron tried to follow him, but, trapped by the crowd, she watched Rupert, Declan, Taggie and the rest of Venturer, plus their supporters, jubilantly swanning off to the Bar Sinister for drinks on the house. Rupert never gave her a backward glance. Sick with desire, she wondered how much longer she could go on playing a double game.

Although the
Cotchester News
reported the meeting a rousing success for Corinium and published numerous rigged readers’ letters of support, it was generally agreed that Venturer had won that round.

RIVALS

After his humiliation at the public meeting, Tony stepped up his campaign to discredit Venturer. Flipping through a list of their names the following morning, he decided his newsroom had been singularly inept in uncovering any dirt. The Bishop of Cotchester, it seemed, had neither fiddled with the collection nor with any of his more cherubic choir boys; Dame Enid had never straddled anything more exciting than her cello; Professor Graystock was recognized as an old goat, but no more so than the average don. On the other hand, Henry Hampshire was plainly capable of being led astray by Daysee Butler. Perhaps she ought to be sent off to interview him.

Nothing as yet on Rupert, except an alleged walk-out with Taggie O’Hara, which Tony didn’t believe. She was far too gormless. All the same it might be a good idea to allow her to cook for Monica again. Primed with a few late-night brandies, she might become indiscreet about the moles who were joining Venturer from other companies. In addition Monica had been so outraged because Tony’d banished Taggie from the house that she’d refused to give any more dinner parties, and Tony did need to entertain some of those boring but influential local dignitaries who might otherwise drift towards Venturer.