Rivals

16

The following Monday Declan stormed into Cameron’s office without knocking. ‘You were at Valerie Jones’s dinner party.’

‘Right,’ said Cameron coolly. Inside she quailed, wondering if Taggie had told Declan how she’d screamed and sworn at her, and how earlier she’d bitched about Declan to Rupert.

‘I gather Taggie tipped the pudding over you. I’m sorry,’ said Declan. ‘If you can’t get the marks out, I’ll be happy to refund you.’

‘It was no big deal,’ said Cameron, absolutely weak with relief. ‘I took them along to the cleaners on Saturday, they’ll be just fine.’

‘Then we’ll pick up your cleaning bill.’

‘Rupert can bloody well do that.’

Declan’s face hardened. ‘The bastard — poor little Tag. She was distraught.’

‘She did really well,’ protested Cameron, feeling she could afford to be generous. ‘The food was terrific, and Monica asked her to do a lunch for her.’

‘I know. Monica rang on Saturday. That cheered Taggie up.’

‘It was all Rupert’s fault,’ said Cameron, deciding to put the boot in.

‘Wait till I get my hands on the bastard.’

‘Why don’t I ask him on to your programme?’ said Cameron idly. ‘That’d be a much more subtle way of burying him.’

Declan paused in his prowling and thought for a minute. It was violently against all his principles to ask someone deliberately on to the programme in order to do a hatchet job.

‘He really screwed her up,’ insisted Cameron, who wanted an excuse to ring Rupert.

‘All right,’ said Declan.

Even Tony was temporarily roused out of his anti-Declan mood. ‘Bloody good idea. If Declan does a Maurice Wooton on Rupert, I’ll double his salary.’

Cameron rang Rupert. ‘I’m just checking out on your availability over the next few months.’

‘You should have come home with me on Friday,’ said Rupert.

Because he was horrendously busy and not given to introspection and would much rather spend any spare second in Gloucestershire on constituency work, or with his children or his horses, or in bed with Sarah Stratton, Rupert then told Cameron he had no intention of going on Declan’s programme.

Cameron played her trump card. ‘I’ll tell Declan you’re too chicken.’

That nettled Rupert: ‘Don’t be silly. All right, I’ll think about it.’

And with that Cameron had to be content.

As Christmas approached Declan grew more depressed. He was totally disillusioned with Tony. He felt like a damsel in distress, who, having been rescued from the BBC by St George, had promptly been put on the game. Not a day passed without some loaded request to open Monica’s Christmas Bazaar for the Distressed Gentlefolk, or draw the raffle at the NSPCC Ball (tickets seventy-five pounds each), or take part in Corinium’s Pantomime to Help the Aged, or turn on the lights in Cotchester. Declan refused them all, which increased Tony’s animosity and enabled James Vereker to step caringly into his shoes. The implication was the same: if you bothered to make use of our excellent research team, you could pull your weight as a member of the Corinium team.

Sapped by endless rows. Declan was aware his programme was losing its edge. He was still very high in the ratings, but he knew people were beginning to turn on in the hope he’d be better this week.

Desperate for some kind of intellectual satisfaction, he was getting up at five every day to spend three or four hours on his Yeats biography, but was too drained to make any real progress. He was also grimly aware that he wasn’t paying enough attention to Maud. After a long bout of lethargy, excited about Caitlin and Patrick coming home for Christmas, she was having one of her spates of frantic energy, which invariably involved spending money. She came to the office Christmas party and charmed absolutely everyone.

Patrick arrived the next day, walking through the door slightly drunk, with four suitcases of washing.

‘Is this the Priory laundry?’

‘Why did you come by taxi?’ asked Maud, flinging her arms round his neck.

‘Because I wrote off the Golf yesterday.’

At that moment Caitlin rang from school.

‘Patrick’s home,’ said Maud in ecstasy.

‘Well he can come and collect me in the Golf, the Mini’s too shaming.’

Christmas Eve saw scenes of frantic revelry at Corinium. The whole building thrummed with lust. Seb Burrows from the newsroom scaled the front of the building when drunk, and placed Charles Fairburn’s Russian hat on one of the red horns of the Corinium ram. Another joker put rainbow condoms on the horns and tail of the bronze Corinium ram in the board room, just before Tony ushered in the local representative from the IBA for a Christmas drink. Secretaries with tinsel in their hair ran shrieking down the passage blowing squeakers. Just as James Vereker passed the board room door, carrying a pile of Christmas presents from caring fans out to his car, four shrieking secretaries converged on him and unzipped his flies. His trousers dropped, to reveal seasonal boxer shorts covered with Santas, just as Tony was ushering the IBA man out. Tony was absolutely livid, but not so livid as Cameron, who’d opted to work over Christmas for want of anything better to do, when she discovered Tony had dispatched Miss Madden to choose Christmas presents both for her and Monica.

‘I bought two diamond bracelets,’ whispered Miss Madden conspiratorially. ‘I thought you might like to choose first.’

‘I’ll take the bigger one,’ said Cameron grimly.

James was even more annoyed to find that Declan had ten times more Christmas cards than he had, and that the Christmas tree in Reception completely obscured James’s framed photograph. Declan’s photograph had been deliberately left unhidden for all to admire.

Despite being horribly broke, Declan sold a first edition of Trollope and gave everyone who worked on his programme, including Cameron, a Christmas pudding and a pep pill for Christmas. He also took them out to a splendid lunch at The Dog and Trumpet outside Cotchester, whose manager subsequently barred anyone from Corinium Television from ever crossing the threshold again.

As the Senior Cameraman pointed out, ‘You don’t need directions to go to one of Corinium’s Christmas parties — just follow the blue flashing lights.’

Afterwards they all conga-ed down Cotchester High Street back to the office, where Declan found Charles Fairburn, who was meant to be organizing the live transmission of Midnight Mass from Cotchester Cathedral that evening, drinking Cointreau and doing his expenses.

Russian hat £100, wrote Charles, dinner with Dean and Chapter £80. Dinner with Chapter £100. ‘The trouble with you, Declan,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘is that you’re not creative enough in your expenses.’

In the newsroom the Corinium weather man leant out of the window at sunset, just to check that the forecast he was about to give on air of a very fine evening was correct. Next moment he received a bucket of cold water over his newly washed hair.

‘It’s raining, you berk,’ shouted a voice from above.

Declan took a box of chocolates up to Miss Madden, who’d always been nice to him. After she’d thanked him profusely, she confided that her nephew, who was a chorister, had been chosen to sing a solo at Midnight Mass.

‘My heart felt like bursting with pride, and I wanted to cry at the same time,’ she said.

Cotchester by midnight, with the golden houses and the great cathedral floodlit, was at its most beautiful. The huge blue spruce just inside the cathedral gates, which was normally a glorious sight festooned with fairy lights at Christmas, was sadly bare this year, because the conservationists, headed by Simon Harris, had claimed the lights were harmful to it.

The church which was lit by candles, white fairy lights on the Christmas tree and television lights, was absolutely packed, with people hoping both to appear on television and to catch a glimpse of Declan O’Hara.

Tony read the first lesson and stumbled twice, to his entire staffs delight. Rupert read the second in his flat drawl, and hardly a girl in the congregation, except Taggie, didn’t long to have him in her stocking the following morning.

‘Please God, if you think it’s right, give me Ralphie,’ prayed Taggie.

Caitlin, taking communion, couldn’t stop thinking about AIDS. But she knew one had to swallow three pints of saliva before one caught it. As she clumped down the aisle in her new black suede brothel-creepers and her wildly fashionable da-glo cat-sick yellow socks, she could have sworn Rupert was looking at her. In the long wait while everyone else took communion, Patrick, also wearing wildly fashionable da-glo cat-sick yellow socks, held out a cracker and Caitlin pulled it with a loud bang.

‘I wonder if Aengus and Gertrude knelt down at midnight to honour the birth of Christ,’ said Patrick, as they drove home. Far from honouring anyone’s birth, sulking at being left behind, Aengus had knocked off and smashed several balls from the Christmas tree and Gertrude had opened three presents from underneath and also chewed the label off a small parcel for Taggie. Inside was the most beautiful silver pendant inlaid with amethysts on a silver chain. She gasped as she slowly read the note:

‘Darling Taggie, I’m sorry I’ve been such a sod. Have a lovely Christmas. See you on New Year’s Eve. All Love R.’

‘Oh it’s beautiful,’ she said with a sob, and fled upstairs, clutching herself in ecstasy.

Outside, the stars and the new moon seemed to be shining just for her. Ralphie had remembered after all, and in seven days she’d see him again.