Rivals (24 page)

    Maud nodded, tears spilling out between her eyelashes.

    'I've seen it coming since September. I wanted to warn you.'

    'Why didn't you then?'

    Declan sighed: 'Has there ever been any point? He's no good for you. He's a traveller. It might have lasted a week, a month, then he'd have dumped you.' He put his huge hands round her neck above the pearl choker.

    'I'm sorry,' she mumbled. 'He's just so attractive.'

    'I know. Hush, hush.' He raised his thumbs to still her quivering mouth. 'Let's go to bed.' 'We can't in the middle of a party.'

    'What better time?'

    'I've spent so much money.'

    'Doesn't matter,' said Declan as they went up the remaining stairs.

    'I love you,' he said softly, 'and I'm the only one of the lot of them who understands you.' 'I know,' whispered Maud. Declan shut the bedroom door behind them.

    Caitlin, going past, heard the key turn. Removing the sign outside the loo on which she had earlier written Ladies, Caitlin turned it over, wrote Do Not Disturb, Sex in Progress, and hung it on her parents' door. Downstairs, the party showed no signs of winding down.

    'I love yew,' said Lizzie, looking at a dark clump of greenery in the corner, as she danced round with Freddie. 'I love you,' said Freddie, giving her a squeeze. 'Honestly, on my life and at least a bottle-and-a-half of Moe't.' It was obvious that Tony wasn't going to be able to prise Cameron away from Patrick for even a second. 'We must go,' he said bleakly to Monica.

    'All right,' said Monica reluctantly. 'I haven't seen Archie for hours. Where is he?' 'Upstairs, I think,' said Caitlin.

    Monica swayed up the stairs, hanging onto the banisters. She hadn't drunk so much since she was a deb; it was really rather fun. Finding several rooms heavily occupied by couples, she finally tracked down her elder and beloved son on a chaise-longue on the top floor, absolutely superglued to Tracey Makepiece, his hand burrowing like a ferret inside her white tricel shirt. 'Archie,' thundered Monica. 'Drop!'

    Archie dropped.

    'We're leaving,' said Monica, 'at once.'

    Downstairs, she told Tony what Archie had been up to.

    'Christ,' exploded Tony, 'he might put her in the club. Get him out of this bloody house as fast as possible.' 'I don't know where Declan and Maud are. We ought to thank them,' said Monica, as Archie shuffled sheepishly down the stairs. Having witnessed the incident, Valerie gave her little laugh: 'One must learn to be democratic, Ay'm afraid these days, Monica. Sharon, of course, gets on with all classes.' 'Evidently,' said Caitlin, sliding down the banisters and

    beaming at Valerie. 'She's been wrapped round Kevin Make-piece for the last two hours.'

    Giving a screech close to death, Valerie bolted upstairs.

    Caitlin turned to Monica, Tony and Archie with a beatific smile on her face. 'I bet Kev a pound he wouldn't neck with Sharon. I suppose I'll have to pay him now.' 'Are your parents around?' said Monica.

    'I'm afraid they've gone to bed,' said Caitlin.

    'Well, if you'd just tell them how very much we all enjoyed it,' said Monica.

    'You may have enjoyed it,' hissed Tony, slipping on the icy drive in his haste to get to the Rolls and the frozen chauffeur, 'but frankly it was the most bloody party I've ever been to, and that child Caitlin is a minx.' 'She's sweet,' protested Archie with a hiccup.

    'If you have anything more to do with any of the O'Hara children I'll disinherit you.'

    About five in the morning, having behaved just as badly as everyone else, Rupert came back into the drawing-room looking for the whisky decanter, and saw a black and white tail sticking out from under the piano. 'Gertrude,' he said.

    The tail quivered. Crouching down, Rupert found both Gertrude and Taggie.

    'What on earth are you doing?'

    'A drunk's passed out in my bed,' said Taggie with a sob. 'Every other bedroom in the house is occupied; a bloody great party, including Ralphie and his blonde are in the kitchen, so I can't wash up, the disco people haven't been paid, Mummy and Daddy have gone to bed, and I don't want to be a wallflower and cramp everyone's style.' 'You won't cramp mine. Come on.' Rupert dragged her out.

    An empty champagne bottle rolled out at the same time.

    'You drink all that?'

    'Nearly.'

    Rupert threw a couple of logs on the dying fire and then sat Taggie down on the sofa beside him. Gertrude took up her position between them. 'It's been a wonderful party,' he said.

    'It hasn't,' said Taggie despairingly. 'It's been a disaster. Patrick's got off with Lord Baddingham's m-mistress, which'll make Lord Baddingham go even more off Daddy. And Mummy's got a terrific crush on someone.' She blushed, remembering it was Rupert, and added hastily, 'I'm not sure who, and poor Daddy's got to pay for it all. I tried and tried to keep the cost down, but then Mummy went off and ordered all that champagne, and invited hundreds and hundreds of people.' 'Your father must earn a good screw from Corinium," said Rupert reasonably.

    'He does -' Taggie cuddled Gertrude like a terrified child clutching a teddy bear -'but it's not nearly enough. He's got a massive overdraft and we still haven't paid for our leaving party in London, and he got another huge tax bill yesterday, and he hasn't paid the last one yet, and Mummy and Caitlin and Patrick won't take it seriously. They think Daddy's a bottomless pit who'll always provide. 'To produce his best work,' she went on, 'he's got to be kept calm. That's why we moved to the country for some peace and for him to finish his book. And he loathes Lord Baddingham, he thinks he's dreadfully cor -cor…' She blocked on the word.

    'Corrupt,' said Rupert.

    'That's right, and shouldn't be running Corinium at all. Daddy's so headstrong, I'm sure he'll walk out if there are any more rows, and he says the BBC won't have him back.' Despite being drunk, Rupert appreciated it wasn't at all an ideal setup.

    'Of course the BBC would,' he said. 'Your father's a genius. He's got everything going for him.'

    'Except us,' said Taggie with a sob. 'We're all a drain on him.'

    'You're not,' said Rupert.

    'I am. Ralphie doesn't love me. No one will ever love me.'

    Rupert let her cry for a few minutes, then made her laugh by putting his black tie on Gertrude.

    'I'm so sorry,' stammered Taggie, wiping her eyes on some' one's discarded silk shawl. 'I'm being horribly ssselfindul-gent.' 'You're not.' Suddenly Rupert felt very avuncular and protective as he did when one of his dogs cut its paw. He wished a visit to the vet and a few stitches could cure Taggie's problems.

    'I'm going to get that drunk out of your bed and then you can go to sleep.'

    "I must pay the disco - but no one seems to want them to stop and the Makepieces. I've got the money.' She got a large wad of tenners out of the George V Coronation tin on the desk.

    'I'll pay them,' said Rupert, taking the money. 'You're going to bed.'

    Up in Taggie's turret bedroom, with some effort, Rupert lifted Charles Fairburn out of the bed and, lugging him down the winding stairs, put him on the chaise-longue recently vacated by Archie and Tracey Makepiece. As Taggie's room was like the North Pole, he returned with a duvet he'd whipped off a fornicating couple in the spare room. Taggie had got into a red flannel nightgown and cleaned her teeth. Lady in Red, thought Rupert. She had huge black circles under her eyes. She looked about twelve. 'Everything'll work out all right,' he said, tucking her in. 'You've been so kind,' stammered Taggie. 'I'm sorry I was so rude to you before, and thank you for the pendant.' But as Rupert put out a hand to touch her cheek, Gertrude, still in her black tie, growled fiercely.

    'You may have forgiven me,' said Rupert, 'but Gertrude hasn't.'

19

    At seven-thirty the disco was still pounding. All over the house Patrick's friends, with ultra-fashionable cat-sick yellow socks over their eyes like aeroplane eye masks, had crashed out on arm chairs and sofas. Charles snored happily on his chaise-longue. In the small sitting-room, watched balefully by Gertrude still in Rupert's black tie, Cameron and Patrick opened Patrick's presents, throwing the wrapping paper into the fire to ignite the dying embers. Cameron had never seen such loot: gold cufflinks, Rolex watches, diamond studs, a Leica camera, a Picasso drawing, a Matthew Smith, a red-and-silver-striped silk Turnbull and Asser dressing-gown. Patrick was like the prince in the fairy story, thought Cameron, whom each of the neighbouring kings was trying to win over with more and more extravagant presents. She thought bitterly back to her own twenty-first birthday. Neither of her parents had even bothered to send her a card. 'You'll never remember who gave you what. That's neat,' she added, as Patrick drew out a copy of The Shropshire Lad from some shiny red paper. 'Very,' said Patrick. 'First edition. What have you got there?'

    'Silver hip flask, from someone called All my Love Lavinia. She's had it engraved. Who's she?'

    'My Ex,' said Patrick, collapsing onto the sofa to read

    'How Ex?'

    'About two minutes before midnight last night. Listen: When I was one-and-twenty, I heard a wise man say, Give crowns and pounds and guineas, but not your heart away. Hope that's not prophetic. I wish Housman hadn't used the word "Lad" so often; so appallingly hearty. Who's that from?' Cameron pulled a long, dark-brown cashmere scarf from a gold envelope. 'Georgia and Ralphie.'

    'I bet Georgie paid for it -kind of them, though.'

    He got up and wound the scarf round Cameron's neck, holding on to the two ends and slowly drawing her towards him.

    'It's yours. Everything I have is yours,' he said, kissing her, only breaking away from her because the telephone rang. He grinned as he put down the receiver. It was the vicar of Penscombe asking if they could turn the disco down for an hour so he could take early service. 'I must go,' said Cameron.

    'You must not. I'll tell those disco boys to go and have some breakfast and then you and I are going to watch the sun rise.' Wearing three of Patrick's sweaters, a pair of Taggie's jeans, rolled over four times at the ankle, Caitlin's gumboots, and a very smart dark-blue coat with a velvet collar left over the banisters by Bas Baddingham, Cameron set out with Patrick. 'I've shaved so I won't cut your face to ribbons,' he said.

    'The wind'll do that,' grumbled Cameron.

    The wind, in fact, had dropped, but a vicious frost had ermined all the fences, roughened the surface of the snow and turned the waterfall in the wood to two foot-long icicles. Gertrude charged ahead leaping into drifts, tunnelling the snow with her snout. 'Wow, it's beautiful,' said Cameron, as the valley stretched out below them. 'How much of it's yours?'

    To the bottom of the wood. The rest of the valley belongs to Rupert Campbell-Black.'

    Christ, it's a kingdom, thought Cameron, looking across at the white fields, the blanketed tennis court, Rupert's golden house with its snowy roof and the bare beech wood rearing up behind like a huge spiky white hedgehog. 'We're trying to get him on your father's programme.'

    'Why bother? Pa could interview him by morse code across the valley. He's the most awful stud. Evidently resentful husbands all over Gloucestershire bear scars on their knuckles from trying to bash down bedroom doors.' 'He was there last night,' said Cameron.

    'Was he?' said Patrick. 'I only had eyes for you.'

    They had reached the water meadows at the bottom of the wood. Here the snow had settled in roots of trees, in the crevices of walls, and in six-foot drifts anywhere it could find shelter from yesterday's blizzard. The blizzard had also laid thick white tablecloths of snow fringed with icicles on either side of the stream which ran with chattering teeth down the valley. It was deathly quiet except for Rupert's horses occasionally neighing to one another. But it was getting lighter. 'Nice scent,' said Patrick, burrowing his face in her neck. 'What is it?'

    'Fracas.'

    'Very appropriate. Who gave it to you?'

    'Tony.'

    'Why hasn't he got a neck?' Patrick hurled a snowball into the woods. Gertrude hurtled after it. 'You'd have thought with that much money he could have bought himself a neck.' 'Shut up,' said Cameron. Tell me, do your mother and father always slope off to bed in the middle of their own parties?' 'It's a very odd marriage,' said Patrick, pointing his new Leica at her. 'Look towards the stream, darling. My father has always seen my mother as Maud Gonne.' The woman Yeats was fixated on?'

    'Right. Yeats fell in love with her at exactly the same age my father fell in love with my mother. Look, badger tracks.' Patrick bent down to examine them. 'Maud Gonne was a rabid revolutionary. Yeats knew he wouldn't impress her with poetry, so he got caught up in a political movement to

    unite Ireland. Then she married John MacBride, another revolutionary. Broke Yeats's heart, but it made him write his best poetry. He claimed Maud Gonne was beyond blame, like Helen of Troy.'

    'But your mother isn't a revolutionary, for Christ's sake, and she hasn't married someone else.'

    'No, but she has Maud Gonne's tremendous beauty, and my father has an almost fatalistic acceptance that she's above blame and will have affairs with other men.' 'Doesn't your mother care for him?' 'In her way. I once asked her why she messed him about so much. She said that, with every woman in the world after him, she could only hold him by uncertainty.' Cameron digested this.

    'But if he only loves her, and doesn't want all these women, why can't she stop playing games and love him back?'

    'That's far too easy. She's convinced that, once he's sure of her, his obsession would evaporate. So the games go on.' 'I wish they wouldn't,' said Cameron. 'It sure makes him cranky to work with.'

    She sat on a log and watched Patrick write 'Patrick loves Cameron' in huge letters in the snow. Then he got out his hip flask, now filled with brandy, and handed it to her. 'You warm enough?' Cameron nodded, taking a sip.

    'Do you have a drinking problem?' she asked, as Patrick took a huge slug.

    Patrick laughed. 'Only if I can't afford it. Whisky's twelve pounds a bottle in Dublin. Will you come and stay with me at Trinity next term?'

    It's crazy, thought Cameron. He's utterly unsuitable and eight years younger than me, but the snow had given her such a feeling of irresponsibility, she hadn't felt so happy for years. The only unsettling thing was that he reminded her so much of Declan. They had the same arrogance, the same assumption that everyone would dance to their tune. Patrick seemed to read her thoughts.

    'Don't worry, I'm not at all like my father. Being Capricorn, I have a very shrewd business head. I may be overexacting, but I'm also cool, calculating and calm, whereas my father is very highly strung and overemotional. Capricorns also have excellent senses of humour and make protective and loving husbands.' He grinned at her. The violet shadows beneath the brilliant dark eyes were even more pronounced this morning, but nothing could diminish the beauty of the bone structure, the full slightly sulky curve of the mouth, or the thickness of the long dark eyelashes.

    'Not a very artistic sign, Capricorn,' Cameron said crushingly.

    'What about Mallarme?' said Patrick. 'One of the bravest, most dedicated of poets. He was Capricorn. He knew what slog and self-negation is needed to produce poetry. He understood the loneliness of the writer. Look, here's the sun.'

    Hand in hand they watched the huge red sun climbing up behind the black bars of the beech copse on the top road, blushing at its inability to warm the day.

    'Looks like Charles Fairburn spending a night inside for soliciting,' said Patrick.

    'God, I wish I had a crew,' said Cameron. 'D'you realize you can only afford to film sunrises in winter in this country? In summer it rises at four o'clock in the morning. That's in golden time, when you have to pay a crew miles over the rate for working through the night. Christ, I hate the British unions.'

    Patrick turned towards her. 'I only like American-Irish unions. Let me look at you.'

    Her dark hair, no longer sleeked back with water, was blown forward in black tendrils over her cheek bones, and in a thick fringe which softened the slanting yellow eyes, and the beaky nose. Her skin and her full pale lips were amber in the sunshine.

    Patrick sighed and took another photograph. 'Even the sun's upstaged. You're so dazzling, he'll have to wear dark glasses to look at you.'

    Cameron laughed. He'd be terribly easy to fall in love with, she was shocked to find herself thinking.

    'How many more terms have you got?' she asked as they wandered back.

    Two.'

    'What are your future goals?'

    'To take you to bed when we get home.'

    'Don't be an asshole! Apart from that?'

    'Get a first, then write plays.'

    'Just like that?'

    'Just like that. I've started one already.'

    'What's it about?'

    'Intimidation by British soldiers in Ulster.'

    'You're crazy neither the BBC nor ITV would touch it, particularly in an election year. Nor will the West End.'

    'Broadway would, and a success there would come here.'

    'Very self-confident, aren't you?'

    'Not particularly. I just know what I want from life.'

    He moved closer, putting his hands inside the three jerseys warming them on her small breasts.

    'I want you most.'

    Back at The Priory, people were beginning to surface. Bas, having put so many Alka Seltzers in a glass of water they'd fizzed over the top, was trying to find his overcoat. Caitlin was eating Alpen and reading Lady Chatterley's Lover. Taggie was serving breakfast to Simon Harris's monsters, trying to give the baby its bottle and comfort Simon Harris who was sobbing at the kitchen table with his face in his hands.

    'Oh Patrick, thank goodness you're back,' she said. 'Could you possibly ring the doctor about…'She nodded in Simon Harris's direction.

    'No,' said Patrick, backing out of the kitchen. 'Sorry, darling, I'm busy.'

    'I'm going home to call the office and get some sleep,' said Cameron.

    'No,' said Patrick, suddenly frantic. 'If we go to sleep it won't be my birthday any more and we'll break the spell.'

    He took her up the winding stairs to his bedroom in the east turret, which was painted dazzlingly white, as though

    the snow had fallen inside. There were no carpets or curtains, and the only furniture was a desk, a chair, a green and white sofa piled high with books, and a vast red-curtained oriental four-poster with bells hanging from the tops of the posts. The view, however, was magnificent, straight across the valley and up to Penscombe. You could see the weathercock on top of the church spire glittering in the sunlight.

    A volume of Keats lay open on the bed: the pages were covered with pencilled notes. Picking it up, Cameron crawled under the duvet and tried to decipher Patrick's writing. Looking up, she saw the ceiling was painted dove grey with little stars picked out in white.

    If only she'd had a room like this when she was young, she thought bitterly. Patrick went off to get them some breakfast. He took longer than anticipated. Taggie was on the telephone ringing up some doctor about Simon Harris, but she ran after him and buttonholed him as he was going back upstairs with a tray, dragging him into the sitting-room, distraught that he had Cameron in his room.

    'She's Tony Baddingham's cc-concubine.'

    'Is that your word for the day?' said Patrick coldly.

    'No, that's what Daddy calls her. Do you want to ruin his career?'

    Tony B couldn't be that petty, firing a megastar like Pa, just because I took his mistress off him.'

    'He could! He's really evil!'

    'Well if he's that evil, Pa shouldn't be working for him. Now, get out of my way, sweetheart. The coffee's getting cold.'

    'And I've had enough of entertaining your friends,' Taggie screamed after him.

    'Bicker, bicker,' said Caitlin, looking up from Lady Chatterley's Lover. 'Pity it isn't Spring, then Cameron could festoon your willy with forget-me-nots. Oh my God,' she screamed, as an ashen Daysee Butler shuffled downstairs in a white towelling dressing-gown. 'It's The Priory ghost.'

    Upstairs, Patrick found Cameron wearing his new red and silver dressing-gown and reading Keats. The sun shining

    through the stained glass of one of the windows had turned her face emerald, ruby and violet like a nymph of the rainbow. Patrick felt his heart fail.

    He had brought up croissants, Taggie's bramble jelly, a bunch of green grapes, a jug of Buck's Fizz and some very strong black coffee. Cameron, who'd had no dinner the night before, was starving and ate most of it. It was astonishing, thought Patrick, that she looked desirable even with croissant crumbs on her lips. But even the black coffee couldn't keep her awake for long. Patrick didn't sleep. He sat making notes on Keats, which was one of his set books, but spending more time gazing at her. In sleep her face lost all its