Rivals (6 page)

    'I just feel it's revoltingly disloyal to Winifred,' repeated Monica.

    She had applied Pond's vanishing cream and face powder, and a dash of bright-red lipstick, which was the extent of her daytime make-up, and was now adding her night make-up: brown block mascara put on with a little brush.

    'I swore to Winifred I'd never have that little tramp' -Monica spat on her mascara - 'over the threshold.' Tony's brows drew together like two black caterpillars. 'Paul is still our local MP, even if he has been booted out of the Cabinet,' he said patiently. 'With the franchise coming up next year, I have to entertain whatever wife he chooses. At least I waited until after they were married.'

    As Tony moved forward to do up the clasp of her diamond necklace, Monica caught sight of her husband's reflection. The red tailcoat with dove-grey facings made him look taller and thinner, and gave a distinction to his somewhat heavy good looks, but Monica hardly noticed. 'I still ought to telephone Winifred and tell her.' 'She's in Spain. Let it rest. I'd better go down; they'll be here in a minute.'

    Monica glanced at her diamond watch. Lohengrin was about to start on Radio 3. If only she could stay at home and listen to it, she thought wistfully. As she slotted a three-hour blank tape into her radio cassette and pressed the record button, she called after Tony, 'Can you tell Victor to up the proportion of orange juice in the Buck's Fizz. We don't want everyone arriving at the town hall plastered like last year.'

    An hour later, downstairs in the huge dark panelled drawing-room hung with tapestries, members of the party were beginning to unthaw and retreat from the fierce red glow of the beech logs smouldering and crackling in the vast fireplace. Lizzie Vereker, sustained by at least six glasses of Buck's Fizz, had perked up and forgotten her extra pounds and her straining red dress.

    Neither Rupert nor Beattie Johnson had arrived yet, but there was plenty to gaze at. Paul Stratton's new wife, for example, was absolutely gorgeous. She had entered the room looking little girlish and apprehensive, eyes cast down, clinging to Paul's arm and hardly speaking. She was wearing a yellow silk dress which matched her thick piled-up gold hair, and a beautiful tobacco-brown fringed silk shawl covering her shoulders and wound high round her neck.

    After replying in shy monosyllables to Tony and Monica's questions, she had allowed herself to be introduced to James and also to Tony's youngest brother, Bas, who was a terrific rake with black patent-leather hair, a smooth olive complexion, and a very overdeveloped little finger from twisting women round it. Now a small smile was beginning to play around Sarah's full coral lips at Bas's extravagant compliments, and the shawl was beginning to slip to reveal the most voluptuous golden shoulders and bosom. She and Paul must have been somewhere hot for their honeymoon, decided Lizzie.

    Paul didn't seem to have reaped the same benefit. His dark hair, which he'd once brushed straight back, had gone silver grey and been coaxed forward, almost to his eyebrows, and in little commas over his very pink ears. Sarah, being young, had obviously encouraged him into a Paisley bow-tie and a wing collar, the points of which kept being bent over by a new double chin. His once hard angular face seemed to have softened and weakened. He still, however, had the same all-embracing smile that passed over you like a lighthouse beam, and still liked the sound of his own voice. He was now talking to Freddie Jones, the electronics multimillionaire.

    'Three million unemployed," he boomed, 'is a Mickey Mouse figure. Didn't you see that article about that factory manager who was offering people two hundred and twenty pounds a week merely to stuff mattresses, and simply couldn't get staff? The working classes just don't want to work. They're shored up by moonlighting and the great feather bed of the welfare state.'

    Paul made the mistake of thinking that someone with such capitalist instincts would automatically vote Tory. Freddie Jones listened to him carefully but didn't say anything. He was plump and jolly, with rumpled red-gold curls, round, merry grey-blue eyes, a snub nose and an air that life was a tremendous adventure. Lizzie thought he looked much more fun than anyone else.

    Across the room, she noticed, James had broken swiftly away from Sarah Stratton, and was now talking to a very slim woman with dimples and short brown curls tied up by a blue bow. She was wearing a pale-blue midi dress with a full skirt and a top, of which the satin lining was the strapless bodice, and the gauze over it covered her arms down to her wrists and her shoulders and tied in a pussy-cat bow at the neck. It was the most ghastly dress Lizzie had ever seen. But the woman, who Lizzie deduced must be Freddie Jones's wife, seemed frightfully pleased with herself, and was laughing

    away, rolling her eyes and gazing up at James's beautiful bronzed face with excessive admiration.

    Apart from Sarah Stratton, Lizzie decided hazily, the men looked much more glamorous than the women this evening, gaudy peacocks in their different tail coats, red with grey-blue facings for the West Cotchester Hunt, red with crimson for the neighbouring Gatherham Hunt, dark blue with buff for the Beaufort. If he hadn't been so good-looking, James in a dinner jacket would have been outclassed. Helping herself to another Buck's Fizz, Lizzie wandered somewhat unsteadily over to the seating plan for dinner at the Town Hall. She was sitting next to Freddie Jones. James was on Monica Baddingham's right. Maybe his predictions about his brilliant future were about to come true. Laughing uproariously, two handsome young bloods in red coats now rushed up and started marking the seating plan with red asterisks. 'What are you doing?' asked Lizzie.

    'Singling out the worst gropers,' said one. 'We're starting with Bas Baddingham and Rupert Campbell-Black.' 'Better put one beside my husband,' said Lizzie.

    'Who's he?'

    'James Vereker.'

    'We were just about to.' They all collapsed with laughter.

    'Have some more fizz,' yelled Monica Baddingham in her raucous voice, arriving with a jug which contained almost straight orange juice now. 'I can't think what's happened to Rupert. We'll have to leave in a sec, or we'll be late for dinner.' She drifted off. 'Do we dare put an asterisk by Tony's name?" said one of the young bloods.

    'Of course,' said the other, seizing the Pentel.

    Giggling, Lizzie glanced across the room to see James beckoning imperiously.

    He's had enough of Mrs Jones, so he wants to palm her off on me and press the flesh, thought Lizzie.

    Ignoring James, she turned back to the seating plan. Next minute James had crossed the room and seized her wrist. 'May I borrow her?' he asked coldly.

    'Of course,' said the young bloods, 'as long as you bring her straight back.'

    James dragged Lizzie away. 'Do pay attention when I signal.'

    'I was having a nice time.'

    This is work,' hissed James. 'I want you to meet Valerie Jones. She's opening a boutique in Cotchester next month. You must go and buy something.' Never, never, thought Lizzie sulkily, if she sells dresses like that blue thing she's wearing.

    'Lizzie writes novels,' James told Valerie Jones, as if to explain his wife's scruffy appearance.

    'I'd laike to wraite novels if I had the taime,' said Valerie Jones, in an incredibly elocuted voice, 'but Ay'm so busy with the boutique and the kids and moving in and we do have to entertain a lot. People are always saying, You should wraite a book, Mrs Jones, you've had such a fascinating laife." She screwed her face up in what she obviously thought was a fascinating smile.

    Close up, Lizzie noticed that Valerie Jones had very clean nails, perfectly shaved armpits and the very white eyeballs of the non-reader and non-drinker. She was tiny and very pretty in a doll-like way, but Lizzie suddenly understood the expression: blue with cold. Valerie's china-blue eyes were the coldest she'd ever seen. The pink and white skin also concealed the rhinoceros hide of the relentless social climber. 'I'll leave you girls to get acquainted,' said James. 'Better have a word with Paul Stratton, or he'll think I'm avoiding him. We must have a dance later,' he added admiringly to Valerie. 'I bet you're as light as thistledown.' 'Seven stone on the scales this morning,' simpered Valerie.

    And six-and-a-half of that's ego, thought Lizzie. 'Where d'you live?' she asked.

    'At Whychey,' said Valerie.

    'Quite near us,' said Lizzie. 'We're at Penscombe.'

    But Valerie wasn't remotely interested in where Lizzie lived.

    'And only quarter of an hour from the boutique, so Ay can

    rush down there, if there's any craysis, or a special client comes in. They always ask for me.' Valerie put her head on one side. 'Ay don't know why. Ay think Ay tell people the truth. Ay mean, what is the point of selling somebody a gown that doesn't suit them? It's such a bad advertisement for the boutique.'

    'Which house in Whychey?' asked Lizzie.

    'Oh it's lovely; Elizabethan,' said Valerie. 'We had to do an awful lot though, ripping out all that horrid dark panelling.' Lizzie winced. 'And of course we've completely re-landscaped the garden, but it'll be a year or two before Green Lawns is the paradise we want.'

    Lizzie looked puzzled. 'The only Elizabethan house I know in Whychey is Bottom Hollow Court.'

    'We changed the name,' said Valerie. 'We thought Green Lawns sounded prettier.'

    'Where did you live before?'

    'Cheam,' said Valerie, with the flourish of one saying Windsor Castle. 'We never thought we'd find anywhere as perfect as Cheam. All our help broke down and crayed when we left. But Gloucestershire has so much to offer.'

    At that moment Monica came up.

    'I was just saying, Monica, that Gloucestershire has so much to offer, particularly,' Valerie raised her untouched glass, 'on a gracious evening like tonight.'

    'Not if we don't get any grub,' said Monica briskly. 'We've decided not to wait for Rupert. Do either of you need a loo?'

    Outside it had turned bitterly cold. Valerie came out of the house smothered in an almost floor-length mink. I hope hounds get her, thought Lizzie savagely, as she watched Freddie open the door and settle Valerie in, before going round to the driving seat.

    'Isn't she a poppet?' said James. 'Knew so much about my programme.'

    'Sarah Stratton?' asked Lizzie.

    'No, Valerie Jones. I do hope Freddie joins the Board. We could do with a few caring wives like Valerie at Corinium.'

    Lizzie was dumbfounded. Was James such a dreadful judge of character?

    'What did you think of Sarah Stratton?' she asked.

    'Not a lot. Didn't even know who I was. You'd have thought Paul would have briefed her.'

    Off they set in convoy, cars with silver foxes on the bonnet skidding all over the road, rattling the cattle grids, lighting up the last grey curls of the traveller's joy and the last red beech leaves. Flakes of snow were drifting down as they arrived at Cotchester Town Hall.

    'It's already fetlock-deep in Stow,' bellowed a woman who'd just driven up with a white windscreen. 'But of course you're a coat warmer down here.'

    Cotchester Town Hall, a splendid baroque edifice, two hundred yards down on the other side of the High Street from Corinium Television, had been built in 1902 to replace the old Assembly Rooms. The huge dining-rooms on either side of the ballroom were filled with tables, packed with laughing, chattering people. But in a noisy, glamorous gathering easily the most glamorous, scrutinized table belonged to Corinium Television. The Krug was circulating (Tony was always generous when the evening was deductible) and dinner was now well underway, but Rupert and Beattie Johnson still hadn't turned up and Sarah Stratton, who should have been on Rupert's right, and Tony, who should have had Beattie on his left, were trying to hide their irritation and disappointment.

    Lizzie Vereker, however, was having a lovely time sitting next to Freddie Jones. Totally unpompous, instinctively courteous, noisily sucking up his bortsch, rattling off remarks in a broad Cockney accent at a speed which must tax the most accomplished shorthand typist, he was also, despite a scarlet cummerbund strained double by his wide girth, curiously attractive.

    'I don't know anything about electronics,' confessed Lizzie, taking a belt of Krug, 'but I know you're very good at them. James says you're one of the most powerful men in England.'

    'My wife doesn't fink so,' said Freddie. 'It's a fallacy women are attracted to power. No one's fallen in love wiv me for years. I'd like to be tall like your 'usband. But I got my height from my muvver and my shoulders from my Dad, and the rest 'ad to go somewhere.' He roared with laughter.

    At the head of the table Monica listened politely to James Vereker talking about his programme and his ideas for other programmes, and surreptitiously gazed at Sarah Stratton. Her tobacco-brown shawl had slid right off her golden shoulders now. Her piled-up blonde hair emphasized her long slender neck. The seat beside her, which should have been Rupert's, had now been taken by Bas, Tony's wicked brother, who was chatting her up like mad.

    She's so beautiful, thought Monica. What chance could

    poor Winifred have stood?