‘My Auntie was so superstitious,’ said Valerie, as a waitress rushed in with a dustpan and brush, ‘that if she broke something precious she’d rush down to the bottom of the garden and smash two jam jars to break the run of bad luck.’
‘As Rupert’s heart’s just been broken as well,’ said Cameron viciously, ‘we only need smash one more thing.’
‘Shut up,’ snarled Rupert, pouring a slug of whisky into a nearby wine glass.
Declan shot him a warning look. Nor were matters improved by Bas arriving at the table with Taggie.
‘Haven’t I done well?’ he said smugly. ‘Annabel dropped out, so the understudy took her place. I knew you’d be pleased, Maud darling,’ he added blithely as he bent down to peck Maud’s gritted cheek. ‘You were just complaining yesterday Taggie never had any fun.’
‘You look absolutely perfick,’ said Freddie.
‘Where did that gown come from?’ asked Valerie accusingly.
‘Corinium wardrobe department,’ said Basil, lobbing Freddie’s roll at Georgie Baines at the next table. ‘Suits her, doesn’t it?’
‘She looks great,’ said Declan proudly. ‘But make sure it isn’t bugged.’
‘All the bug would pick up is the hammering of her heart because she’s with me,’ said Bas, squeezing Taggie’s hand.
Taggie glanced shyly across at Rupert, who was now looking at her with complete indifference. Suddenly she felt utterly deflated. Even with every stop pulled out, there was no way she could win him. But there was little time to fret. Next minute a thoroughly over-excited Henry had whisked her off to dance. They were just circling decorously when the band broke into ‘Rock around the Clock’.
‘Ha ha ha,’ said Henry, suddenly galvanized like an over-adrenalized tarantula. ‘I know this tune. There’s life in the old dog yet.’ And he flung Taggie across the floor with great energy.
Every time he twirled her round he nearly pulled her out of her cracker dress. He’ll discover a paper hat and a motto in a minute, she thought as she frantically tugged it up again. As soon as the band stopped, a young blood swooped and asked her to dance, and then another, and another. Each one took her telephone number and said they’d ring her.
Great excitement, because it was regarded as highly symbolic, was caused at the Corinium table when Tony won a portable television on the Tombola.
‘He won’t be needing that much longer,’ growled Declan, who was getting increasingly worried about Rupert.
Freddie had also vanished, ostensibly to fetch Valerie some lemon squash, but he’d been away for three-quarters of an hour, and James Vereker could be seen hunting everywhere for Lizzie as he tried to escape from Sarah. Bas claimed another dance with Taggie and persuaded the band to play ‘Lady in Red’ again. As he and Taggie danced past them, all the band stood up in salute to her beauty.
Rupert was three-quarters of the way down his bottle of whisky when he was tapped sharply on the shoulder by one of his more forceful lady constituents.
‘I know this isn’t the time, but could we have a word about the Swindon—Gloucester motorway?’
She had a face the colour and texture of corned beef and it was now very close to Rupert’s.
‘Bugger the motorway,’ he said.
The corned beef seemed to engorge and darken like the interior of black pudding.
Getting to his feet, leaving her mouthing apoplectically, Rupert reached the dance floor just as Taggie and Bas were coming off. Grabbing Taggie’s hand, he dragged her back onto the floor. Alone in the centre, they gazed at each other. Slowly Rupert examined the huge, blackened, almost feverish eyes, the trembling ruby mouth, the quivering white breasts hardly covered by the crimson ruching. Adoring the way she looked normally in old clothes, with hardly any make-up, he detested this new grown-up, glamorous Taggie.
‘What’s the matter?’ she stammered, stepping back as though scorched by the disapproval in his eyes. ‘I hoped you’d l-l-like it.’
‘You look like a complete tart,’ he said viciously, ‘and as you’re with Bas, you’re obviously going to behave like one.’
Taggie gave a gasp of horror as, turning on his heel, Rupert walked straight back to the table.
‘What was that about?’ taunted Cameron. ‘I thought you liked little girls with bust measurements bigger than their IQs.’
‘I like them better than fucking American smart asses,’ snarled Rupert.
Spitting with fury, passing heraldic shields, suits of armour and antlers of several kinds of deer, Cameron fled to the Ladies. Rupert was a bastard, an utter asshole. But as she looked at her reflection in the ancient, dusty mirror, which should have flattered her, she couldn’t blame him for neglecting her. She looked awful, and the black dress she’d thought so sophisticated and understated had understated her so much she was practically invisible. Why the hell hadn’t she worn her black suede dress? Savagely she daubed her cheekbones with blusher and emptied the remains of a bottle of Jolie Madame – what a singularly inappropriate name – over her wrists and neck.
Coming out into the long gallery, she saw Tony emerging from behind a suit of armour and went sharply into reverse. He was too quick for her. Grabbing her wrists, he drew her into an alcove behind a huge urn filled with blue hyacinths. She tried to wriggle away, but he was too strong for her. Oh, why did that sweet, heady smell make her almost faint with longing?
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, as he regained his breath. ‘I’ve never stopped missing you. I need you. Corinium needs you. Come back to us.’
‘Don’t be fucking infantile,’ hissed Cameron. ‘After the dirty trick you’ve pulled on us?’
‘I’m going to bury Venturer,’ he said evilly, ‘and you’ll go under too. You’ve just no idea what I’ve got up my sleeve.’
Cameron tried not to appear fazed: ‘You’ll never get away with it. The IBA knows you’re as bent as hell.’
‘By the time I’ve finished with Venturer I’ll look like a shining white angel.’
Drawing her towards him, he slowly fingered her rib cage, then pressed the ball of his hand up against her breast, at the same time running the other hand equally slowly over her bottom. It was an act of assessment – not of lust.
‘Dear, dear,’ he sighed, ‘you used to have such a beautiful body. Now you could do a commercial for famine relief.’
‘Don’t be disgusting.’
‘I’m just sad you’ve lost your looks.’ The hand still rotated on her bottom. She shuddered, unable to stop the squirming, helpless, revolted longing. Tony always did this to her.
‘I’ve been working, for Chrissake.’
‘You always thrived on work. You’re having Rupert trouble. I watched you tonight and last Friday.’
Suddenly Cameron realized what the scent of the blue hyacinths reminded her of – the much fainter smell of bluebells in Rupert’s wood the first weekend she spent at Penscombe.
‘He’s got the hots for Taggie O’Hara, hasn’t he?’ gloated Tony. ‘Everyone’s talking about it.’
In the distance the band was belting out ‘Mac the Knife’. It was as though Tony was turning it in her heart.
‘Bullshit,’ she said with a sob, and fled away from him, hearing his laughter following her all down the long gallery.
Cameron was so distraught, she didn’t see Declan standing in the shadows of a high tallboy. Worried about her scrap with Rupert, he’d come looking for her, wanting to comfort and steady her. He was about to call out. The next moment he froze as he saw a man emerging from behind the urn. The glint of his huge signet ring as he smoothed his hair, and the almost orgasmic expression on his face as he passed, made him instantly recognizable.
Declan went straight back to the Venturer table, but found only Maud and Freddie.
‘You was so dramatical in
The Merry Widow
,’ Freddie was saying.
‘Was I really?’ said Maud, looking very happy.
‘What’s hup?’ said Freddie in alarm as he saw Declan’s face. Sitting down, Declan came straight to the point.
‘I’ve just seen Cameron talking to Tony.’
‘Just saying ‘ullo.’
‘No, it was a long and very intimate conversation. She was in tears when she left him. He looked delighted with himself.’
‘Shit,’ said Freddie. ‘It’s Rupert’s fault. He’s been diabolical to Cameron all evening.’
‘What’s much, much worse is that she and I have been working on the Dermot MacBride deal and the Royal Shakespeare negotiations all week. If she leaks those to him we’re stymied.’
‘I still don’t fink she’s like that,’ said Freddie. ‘They was probably just reminiscing.’
‘We’re off,’ said a voice.
It was Bas with his arm round a somewhat tearstained Taggie.
‘You’ve only just arrived,’ said Maud hysterically.
‘I know, but we’ve got somewhere else to go on to,’ said Bas.
Suddenly there was a shriek of excitement as Henry rode a horse into the ballroom and round the floor, followed by hounds. He had snow on his shoulders and his black hat, and all the hounds had snow on their faces and their frantically wagging sterns. Everyone came rushing in to cheer them. There were terrific view holloas, as a hound trotted calmly up to the Corinium table and lifted its leg on the back of Tony’s chair.
‘Wish that dog was a member of the IBA,’ said Freddie.
By the time the hounds had gone, Cameron and Rupert were back at the table. Rupert, Declan noticed, had snow on his hair too and was shivering uncontrollably. Maud, too, seemed suddenly terribly upset, particularly when Valerie pointed out how keen Bas seemed on Taggie.
‘Much better for him to find someone nearer his age,’ she said smugly. ‘Where are they, anyway?’
‘Gone,’ said Declan.
‘Where?’ asked Rupert, looking up sharply.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Get your coat,’ said Rupert to Cameron.
He was waiting in the hall, glaring at a buffalo whose eyes were as glassy as his own, making no effort to conceal his impatience.
‘It’s not easy extracting one’s coat from underneath a heaving husband and someone else’s wife,’ snapped Cameron.
Outside, the snow was already four inches deep. As the long dresses of departing guests trailed over the white lawn, flurrying flakes seemed to blur the great house and a party of whooping young bloods, all no doubt with Taggie’s telephone number in their breast pockets, engaged in a snowball fight. Cameron felt she had gone back four hundred years.
‘I’ll drive. You’re drunk,’ she said to Rupert as they reached the car.
Careful, she told herself, as the Aston-Martin slid all over the road like Thumper on the ice, he’s reached that pitch of drunkenness that will erupt into violence at any minute. Having been beaten up by Tony, she was terrified of it happening again. But as they drew up outside the front of Penscombe Court, Rupert waited until she got out of the car, then slid across into the driving seat and set off in a tremendous flurry of snow.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Cameron let herself into the house and, shouting at the dogs to get out of her way, went straight to Rupert’s office and started searching. In the bottom drawer of his desk, under the lining paper, she found what she was looking for – that impossibly ill-spelt and ill-punctuated letter Taggie had written Rupert, thanking him for Claudius, and two photographs of her running in the wood. She stiffened when she saw the second. Rupert’s kids were there as well as Taggie. They were holding her hands and laughing. The leaves were flame-red on the beech trees, so it must have been autumn, and Tab was wearing her puff-ball skirt, so it must have been this year. Shit – and they all looked so happy. It must have been while she was away in Ireland. That was why Rupert had been so reluctant to have the kids over since, and insisted on taking them out on his own, in case they babbled on about Taggie. That was almost the worst thing, that she had utterly failed with the children, where Taggie had succeeded. Also under the lining paper, which she couldn’t interpret, was a pile of faded leaves.
Rupert knew he was far too drunk to drive, but he didn’t care. Anyway, he had always jumped horses when he was pissed with that much more dash and brilliance. Unable to stop himself, he drove straight into Cotchester and parked outside the Bar Sinister. The roofs of the honey-coloured houses were completely hidden with snow now. Flakes were landing like huge polar bears on his bonnet, almost obscuring his vision, but not so much that he couldn’t see the lights in the flat above. Bas was plainly at home.
Christ – why had he been such a shit to Taggie? She’d looked so fucking gorgeous and he’d detested it because he wanted to keep her as his little teenager. At the back of his mind he’d expected her to be always there. Rationally he knew he must never make a play for her, that one day she’d find some nice dull kind boy of her own age to take care of her. But he hadn’t thought the whole thing through, or realized he’d be driven into a maddened frenzy of jealousy because she’d been stolen from under his nose by the second worst rake in the county who was probably expertly initiating her into the pleasures of the flesh at this moment.
He slumped on the steering wheel, groaning. He wanted to break down the door, to kill Bas, to drag Taggie back to The Priory like a father out of a Victorian melodrama. In his misery he didn’t even feel the cold. Gradually the snow obscured the entire windscreen and he had to turn on the engine to start up the wipers, when suddenly the balcony doors opened and Bas and Taggie came out. She was wearing Bas’s red coat. Winding down the window, Rupert could hear her cries of joy at the beauty of the snow. Next moment Bas had gathered up the snow along the balcony rail to make a snowball and handed it to her, but she only managed to chuck it a few yards down the ghostly whitening street.
‘Tell you never played cricket at school,’ said Bas fondly.
Then, drawing her close by the lapels of his coat, he slowly kissed her. They were so preoccupied, they didn’t even notice Rupert. Totally sobered up, he drove back to Penscombe.