Polo (69 page)

    `No, lust,' drawled Rupert, then added hastily, `but it would have been the reaction of any man. She's very pretty but I was involved with someone else at the time.'

    `And you lead a full sex life?'

    Full of Taggie, thought Rupert. `I'm afraid I'm not prepared to discuss our sex life with anyone,' he said coldly. `The reason she can't have children has nothing to do with sex.'

    Mrs Paget fingered her pearls. `You've only been married seventeen months, hardly long enough for us to place one of our very special babies with you. With the pill, the abortion law and girls keeping their babies, children to adopt are like gold dust today. And you are in a catch 22.' She brought out the expression to show she read. `You're forty at the end of this year, which makes you too old to adopt.'

    Rupert gritted his teeth. `I know that.'

    `And we have couples who've been on our waiting-list for years. You wouldn't consider an older child, handicapped perhaps, or coloured? I'm sure Mrs Campbell-Black has the necessary patience and understanding.'

    `Well, I don't,' said Rupert truthfully. `We want a baby.'

    `Beggars can't be choosers,' said Mrs Paget almost archly.

    The stupid bitch is trying to rile me, thought Rupert. If I lose my temper she'll mark me down as a baby-basher. `Hardly a beggar,' he snapped.

    It was all a ghastly game. In his inside pocket was a cheque for a quarter of a million pounds, which would buy a house in Battersea for the society to house their unmarried mothers. The donation would be anonymous - so the press would never find out - and Rupert and Taggie would jump the queue.

    `Are you sure you personally want to adopt, and it wouldn't be better for Mrs Campbell-Black to concentrate on being a mother to your own children? I'm sure they need a stable background.'

    `Plenty of stables already at Penscombe,' said Rupert idly.

    `There's no need to be flippant. Couples who lose a baby often try to adopt one immediately to fill the aching void, but it's the wrong motive.'

    `Works perfectly well with puppies,' said Rupert.

    `Mr Campbell-Black,' Mrs Paget's midnight-blue cashmere bosom swelled, `I don't like your attitude. We have to ensure you'd make a suitable father. Your track record isn't exactly… '

    `Oh, for Christ's sake, ask my own children!' Getting to his feet, Rupert walked over to the window. Outside, under a colonnade of burgeoning plane trees, a slim girl in jeans was pushing a pram and gabbling happy nonsense to the baby inside. He'd be reduced to kidnapping soon.

    `You're supposed to be a Christian organization,' he went on. `Isn't there something in the Bible about more rejoicing in heaven over one lost sheep?'

    `Calm down,' said Mrs Paget, thinking how frightfully attractive he was. She wanted the money for the unmarried mothers' house very badly. The committee would regardit as a tremendous coup and had already earmarked an adorable Irish baby for Rupert and Taggie, but she felt he ought to be made to sweat a little longer.

    `I understand,' she went on soothingly. `You must be feeling very threatened. It happens to lots of middle-aged men who marry very young wives and worry not only about satisfying them sexually, but keeping them amused. A baby seems the perfect answer.'

    Rupert's jaw dropped. There was an imperious knock on the door.

    `I'm interviewing, Miss Roach,' cried Mrs Paget.

    `I think you should see this,' said Miss Roach who looked more like a cod. Barging in, she thrust a copy of
The Evening Scorpion
in front of Mrs Paget, whose pale pink wild-rose complexion slowly turned the dark crimson of an Ena Harkness as she read.

    `I'm afraid there's not an adoption society in the country who'll touch you now,' she said, handing Rupert the paper.

    On the front page were two huge photographs of Perdita and Rupert at eighteen. Both in profile, they were incriminatingly identical.
`Snap!'
said the huge headline.

    Rupert was as pale as the lilies-of-the-valley on the table as he turned to the centre pages where Jackie Cosgrave's statement was quoted in full:

`There were seven men at the Sidney Street Orgy. They included rock star Bob Riley and his lead guitarist Harry Nelson, actor Johnny Friedlander, the Hon Basil Baddingham, a polo player, show-jumpers Rupert Campbell-Black and Billy Lloyd-Foxe and myself. At eighteen, Rupert was an officer in an exclusive cavalry regiment, the Blues, and was home on leave from Cyprus. He was very brown and so beautiful no-one could take their eyes off him. Being in the forces, he was also the only one with short hair. Rupert was very much taken with Daisy, and being very fit, made love to her most of the night. We all had bets how long he could keep going. The rest of us were too stoned to do very much, though we all had a go at her, I remember, because she was so tasty.'

    Jackie Cosgrave had always been disgusting, thought Rupert irrationally. Like Daisy two days before, he couldn't read any more. Inside were fuzzy blown-up snapshots, including one of Daisy and Rupert both naked. In one he

    was smiling down at her and stroking her left breast. In another he was kissing her passionately and his left hand had disappeared below the cropping of the photograph. There were also pictures of everyone else at the orgy, and, even more horrible, on the next page of Eddie, Violet, Marcus and Tabitha, with a caption:
`You're half-brothers
and sisters now.'

    `Jesus,' exploded Rupert, crumpling up the paper and throwing it in the corner. Then, turning to Mrs Paget, `And you believe this junk?'

    `It seems conclusive,' she stammered. `You could be twins.'

    `I'm going to get the highest damages in history. Can I use your telephone?'

    Mrs Paget nodded. After the initial rage, she told Miss Roach later, he was terrifying in his calmness.

    It was a good thing the helicopter knew its own way back to Penscombe because Rupert was totally unaware of flying it. As towns, motorways and the winding Thames gave way to acid-green woods, emerald fields and tawny villages, he churned with rage. Perdita was responsible for Taggie losing their own child, and now an adopted baby. And God knows what lasting damage she'd done to his children, just as they were getting over the devastating revelations of his memoirs eighteen months ago.

    He couldn't see the gravel outside his house for reporters and cameramen, and took a savage pleasure in sending them scurrying for their lives. As he leapt out, they all swarmed back.

    `Hello, Rupe, talk about gaining a daughter,' said the
Sun.

    `She's a chip off the old block where horses are concerned,' said the
Mirror.
`You going to teach her to show-jump?'

    `We heard you were trying to adopt a baby. What chances of that now?' asked
The Scorpion.

    `Are you going to recognize paternity?' asked ITN.

    As they ringed him, ravenous for information, there was something of the cornered, maddened bull about Rupert. Then, with his phenomenal strength, he shoved them out of the way and, sending
The Scorpion
and the
Star
flying, charged the front door, which opened like a trap door to admit him, then slammed against their frenzied hammering fists.

    Frantically Taggie and Rupert clung to each other. She tried to smile, but she was deathly pale and her eyes were red-rimmed. `You poor, poor thing, it's so horrible for you.'

    `I'm so desperately sorry.' As he held her, Rupert felt comfort flowing back into his body like a transfusion after a massive loss of blood. `Please don't leave me. I can face anything as long as I've got you.'

    `I'd never leave you,' said Taggie, appalled. `I love you. Anyway, it all happened years ago, long before I met you.'

    `It could have been any of the other guys at the party. They can make anyone look like anyone in photographs.'

    `Course they can. What did they say at the adoption society?' She was trying to control her longing.

    Rupert shook his head. Since they married there had only been truth between them. `I'm afraid they're not going to give us a baby, but we'll get one from somewhere.'

    `It's OK. We've still got Tabitha and Marcus and the dogs,' her voice faltered. `And Perdita,' she was about to say. Rupert's ability to have children seemed so at odds with her own recently enforced infertility. The reporters stepped up the hammering on the door.

    `How could Perdita have done it?' she said in bewilderment. `To poor Daisy as well.'

    `I don't give a fuck about Daisy. You're the only thing I care about.'

    Mrs Bodkin, Rupert's ancient housekeeper, who'd seen endless dramas in her time, came into the hall. Thank God he had Miss Taggie. Seeing them in each other's arms, she coughed.

    `It's Tabitha on the private line, Mr Campbell-Black.' Rupert picked up the telephone. `I was just going to ring you, darling. I'm terribly sorry. D'you want to come over?'

    `Yes, please,' said Tabitha. `Your new intermediate daughter won't take all our money, will she?' Her shrill voice suddenly broke. `You won't love her more than me, will you?'

    `I'm bloody well going to have it out with Daisy,' snarled Rupert as he came off the telephone.

    Ten minutes later his helicopter landed on Ricky's front lawn, and this time the press fell back, scalded by the white heat of his rage. He found Daisy in Ricky's kitchen, mindlessly making a shepherd's pie for supper, not because Ricky wanted it, but to give herself something to do. A smell of frying onion, garlic, peppers and minced lamb drifted through the house. Ricky had pulled down the blue and white striped blinds so the hovering press couldn't see in. For a second Rupert and Daisy stared at each other, both unable not to think of the night they had spent together. How could I? thought Rupert. Daisy looked utterly wretched, her red eyes vanished beneath red swollen lids as though they'd been stung by ants, her face blotchy from crying. An old grey sweater of Ricky's couldn't disguise the weight that had dropped off her.

    `Oh, Rupert, I'm so sorry.' All Daisy could think of was how incredible that such an attractive man should once have screwed her all those years ago.

    `So you fucking should be!' Rupert hurled his fury like acid in her face. `Why the hell didn't you have an abortion?'

    `I didn't have the money.'

    `You can't prove Perdita's my child. Bas has got black eyes just like hers. She could have inherited her riding skills from him or Billy. Bob Riley was almost an albino.'

    `I'm not going to say she's yours,' whispered Daisy. `I just said I was drunk, and can't remember anyone there. It's so awful. You and Taggie have been so sweet to me.'

    `Perdita's completely fucked up Taggie's chances of having or adopting a baby, and what about the effect on Tab and Marcus? God, I'm going to sue her into the next world. I'll ruin her if it kills me.'

    Daisy started to cry and throw whole carrots into the frantically spitting onions and mince.

    `It's burning, lovie.' Ricky crossed the room and turned off the gas. `Let's leave it and have a drink.'

    As Daisy collapsed on to a kitchen chair with her face in her hands, the twins bounded in.

    `Hello, Daddy,' said Dommie, grinning at Rupert.

    `Orgy, porgy, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them pregnant,' said Seb. `Christ, I'm starving.' Grabbing a spoon, he started eating the mince out of the frying pan. `What I feel most sorry for you about, Rupert, is having that frightful little shit, Red Alderton, as a son-in-law.'

    `It's not funny,' shouted Rupert.

    `Well, it's not Daisy's fault,' shouted back Ricky, getting a bottle out of the cupboard, splashing whisky into four glasses and giving one to Daisy.

    `I don't want a drink,' said Rupert.

    `All the more for me,' said Dommie, tipping Rupert's share into his glass. `Are these for Wayne and Kinta?' He picked the whole carrots out of the frying pan.

    `I said it's not Daisy's fault,' repeated Ricky icily. `Bloody is,' said Rupert. `Fucking hippie bringing up her fucking children by Dr Spock rules, letting them run wild, and everything hang out. If she hadn't spoilt Perdita rotten, none of this would have happened.'

    `Balls,' yelled Ricky. `Perdita just happens to have inherited your sodding awful nature.'

    `Who tried to bail you out of prison, and appealed against your conviction?' demanded Rupert in outrage.

    `Below the belt,' said Seb.

    `So was Rupert's dick,' giggled Dommie. `You shouldn't go round screwing girls when they're stoned.'

    `This isn't getting anyone anywhere,' said Ricky. `Are you going to admit paternity or not?'

    `Like hell I am. I'd rather father a mamba.'

    `With Red geeing her up, she may easily take you to court,' said Seb.

    `Let her,' said Rupert flatly. `After what she's done to my children and Taggie twice, I'll bury her.'