Rivals

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I fear the Greeks when they come bearing Presenters,’ muttered Declan.

  ‘Who’s chair?’ James asked Charles Fairburn as the Corinium contingent sat down in the front row.

  ‘Dunno. Belongs to the Town Hall, I should think,’ said Charles.

  ‘No,’ said James impatiently, ‘who’s Chair?’

  ‘I’ve just told you.’

  ‘I’m asking you, who is chairing the meeting?’

  ‘Oh.’ Comprehension dawned on Charles’s round red face. ‘Might be Old Mother Goose —’ which was everyone’s nickname for Lady Gosling – ‘but I wouldn’t have thought she’d have bothered to come this far.’

  Cameron grabbed a seat at the end of the row by the window, as far away from Tony as possible. All she could see was one of his beautifully polished black shoes, rotating as if he were doing an ankle-slimming exercise – a sign that he was nervous. The company in situ always got more flak at public meetings than those seeking to oust it. Tony, frightened of ridicule, knew he was in for a bumpy evening. The entire Corinium contingent studiously ignored Venturer – the committed from distaste, the moles from embarrassment. Henry Hampshire, however, who’d been to a drinks party, had no such reservations.

  ‘Hello everyone,’ he beamed as he came through the door. ‘Hullo, Taggie darling, you’re looking beautiful. Hullo, Rupert.’ Then, turning to the cringing Corinium contingent, boomed, ‘Oh look, there’s Charles, Georgie and Cameron. Must go and say hello.’

  ‘Hen-ree,’ hissed Rupert, grabbing his arm and whispering in his ear. ‘You’re not supposed to know they’re on our side.’

  ‘What?’ said Henry loudly. ‘What’s that? How d’yer mean, not on our side? ’Course they are.’

  Fortunately Tony was talking to the Archdeacon and didn’t hear. As Rupert tried to explain, Henry looked as deflated as an English setter who’s been told he’s not going on a walk, then cheered up when he saw Daysee Butler.

  ‘Who’s she? She on our side?’

  ‘No, she’s with Corinium.’

  ‘Damn shame, pretty girl like that, and that’s Sarah Stratton next to her, isn’t it? She’s a damn pretty girl too. Why isn’t she on our side? Met her shooting at Tony’s.’

  And next moment Henry had broken away from Rupert’s restraining hand and marched across the room to talk to Sarah, who introduced him to Daysee.

  ‘Just saying to Rupert, pretty girls like you should be on our side.’

  Sarah giggled: ‘I don’t think Tony’d like that very much. How’s your Springer spaniel?’

  ‘How incredible you remembering that,’ said Henry, now beaming down on the two girls like an English setter waving his plumy tail at two bitches. ‘What are you both doing afterwards?’

  ‘Bugger off, Henry,’ snarled Tony.

  ‘Hen-ree,’ Rupert dragged him off.

  Fortunately at that moment a diversion was provided by Basil returning with Marti, quite soberly dressed now, and Janey Lloyd-Foxe in a pink flying-suit.

  ‘Hullo, Rupert darling.’ Janey kissed him full on the mouth. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  Rupert tugged up her zip to the bounds of decency, saying, ‘For Christ’s sake go and distract Henry.’

  Basil took Rupert aside. ‘I’ve filled up the hip flask for Wesley.’ Then, dropping his voice, he whispered, ‘Those lovely lips just puckered up to meet yours were round my dick at eight o’clock this morning.’

  ‘What?’ exploded Rupert. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You heard,’ said Basil, grinning.

  ‘How dare you,’ thundered Rupert. ‘She’s married to my best friend.’

  ‘’Course she is, and very happily. I’m just making sure she doesn’t suffer from post-natal depression when Billy’s away.’

  Rupert might well have hit Bas across the room if the IBA – three members of the Board and various members of their staff – hadn’t trooped in and taken up their places on the platform.

  ‘We are honoured,’ Charles whispered to James. ‘Old Mother Goose is in the chair. The IBA must regard the outcome as by no means certain then, if she’s come all this way to have a look.’

  ‘I can’t think why you’re looking so cheerful,’ said James fretfully. ‘Venturer’s bound to offer me a job if they get the franchise. I mean I am “Cotswold Round-Up”, but, as they’ve got the Bishop to handle religious programmes, I can’t see them wanting you.’

  ‘Who are those deadbeats over there?’ Janey asked Bas.

  ‘The Mid-West consortium,’ said Bas. ‘Can’t think they’ll bother us much.’

  Rupert, having at last persuaded Henry to stop chatting up Daysee and sit down, collapsed into a seat between Taggie and Declan.

  ‘How the hell am I going to keep this lot under control until December?’ he said.

  Taggie giggled: ‘Henry’s certainly fallen for Daysee.’

  ‘Let me not to the marriage of true mindlessness admit impediments,’ said Declan.

  The audience were now occupying every seat in the body of the hall, with Corinium spread out along the front row and Cameron at the far end by the window. Next to her, at right-angles, on a single row of chairs, sat the Mid-West consortium, who looked a pretty moth-eaten bunch. Facing them, also on a single row of chairs, forming a square with the platform, sat Venturer.

  Lady Gosling, decided Cameron, looked more like a hedgehog than a goose, a Mrs Tiggywinkle, with small twinkling intelligent eyes, a long thin nose, a pointed chin and rather wild grey hair, held down on either side by tortoise-shell slides. She wore no make-up and, despite the warmth of the evening, was smothered in several shawls over her olive-green wool dress. The cosy exterior, however, was deceptive and hid a rapier mind. As Head of an Oxford college, Gwendolyn Gosling had taught Russian. Her fellow dons were not altogether joking when they nicknamed her ‘Khruschev’. There was shrewdness beneath the amiability, and the twinkling eyes, like the stars, gave off little warmth.

  For a hideous moment at the beginning of the meeting it looked as though no one was going to ask any questions. Then a man in spectacles got up and grumbled about the reception in Gloucester. Corinium’s Chief Engineer got up to answer him, and the stupor produced by engineers at public meetings allowed everyone time to collect their thoughts.

  More straightforward complaints then followed from local councillors who had not yet been interviewed by James on ‘Cotswold Round-Up’ that coverage in their area was pitiful.

  Mrs Makepiece, James’s daily, then rose to her feet, and, disclaiming any connection with Corinium, said ‘Cotswold Round-Up’ was the best programme on telly, and why couldn’t it be on seven days a week. This was greeted by bellows of ‘Rubbish’ and ‘Offside’ from Taggie’s rugger players.

  One of the Corinium shop stewards, who’d just screwed a two-thousand-pound rise out of Tony for all his members, as well as a fat bribe for himself, shouted from the back that he wouldn’t trust Declan O’Hara’s mob further than he could throw them. His claim that industrial relations at Corinium were second to none, however, were greeted by cries of ‘si-down’ from all over the hall.

  ‘As Corinium fork out immediately whatever the unions demand and most of the technicians earn more than the Prime Minister, I should think industrial relations are second to none,’ yelled Bas, to loud cheers from the Venturer supporters.

  The Chairman of Chipping Sodbury’s WI then rose to her feet and said in a ringing voice that her institute was sick to the teeth of news about Cotchester and nothing about Chipping Sodbury.

  Remembering ‘Miss Corinium Television’, Rupert caught Declan’s eye. ‘She’s forgotten Miss Chipping Sodbury’s tits,’ he whispered across Taggie.

  Both men started to shake with laughter, until quelled by a cold look from Lady Gosling.

  Tony rose to reply. ‘I can assure you, madam,’ he said smoothly, ‘that, by an extraordinary coincidence, “Cotswold Round-Up” is due to visit Chipping Sodbury later this week.’

  ‘Are we?’ said Jam
es to Sarah, looking startled.

  ‘In fact,’ Tony went on warmly, ‘we have super plans for the entire Cotswold area.’

  ‘You’ve been here eight years. Why haven’t we seen any of them?’ bellowed Taggie’s headmaster.

  More cheers all round were counterpointed by snores from Mrs Makepiece.

  ‘I’ve studied both Venturer’s and Corinium’s applications at the public library,’ went on Taggie’s headmaster, ‘and Venturer’s programme plans seem infinitely more imaginative. What I would like to ask Lord Baddingham is how much have his grandiose new plans for a multi-million-pound studio, for slots for every possible minority group, for cultural improvement and for spectacular entertainment been spawned by editorial inspiration or desire to hang on to his very lucrative franchise?’

  Tony was about to rise and shout back over the deafening cheers, but James was too quick for him. ‘James Vereker, “Cotswold Round-Up”,’ he announced, getting to his feet and turning sideways so he could be recognized both by the platform and the floor.

  ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’ catcalled Taggie’s rugger captain.

  ‘As anchorman of “Cotswold Round-Up,” said James, ‘I know I speak for each and everyone of us at Corinium from Tony Baddingham downward when I say that Corinium’s ethos can be summed up in two words.’

  ‘Bloody terrible,’ said Taggie’s rugger captain, to screams of laughter.

  ‘Two little words —’ James ploughed on – ‘Corinium cares.’

  ‘The only fing Tony Baddingham cares abart is making a fast buck,’ shouted Freddie, to more deafening cheers.

  Mrs Makepiece snored so loudly that she woke herself up. ‘Let’s get up a partition,’ she said loudly.

  Cameron knew she ought to stand up and defend Corinium, but she didn’t relish getting ripped apart by Declan. She was saved by the Women-in-Broadcasting lobby, who all had moustaches and who complained that there weren’t enough women in any of the consortiums. Lady Gosling nodded in agreement, and made notes.

  The meeting droned on. Wesley Emerson had had a hard day in the field. No one but Rupert and Bas realized that each time his noble head nodded onto his right buttonhole he was taking a long suck of rum from a straw to Rupert’s hip flask in his breast pocket.

  Outside in Cotchester Park, the lime trees were in flower; their sweet delicate scent, stronger after the downpour, drifted in through the open window. Cameron watched the house martins swooping after insects, flashing their white bellies. The tennis courts were packed with people playing vigorous Wimbledon-inspired tennis. In a week or so they’d revert to their usual patball. She glanced surreptitiously across at Rupert, who was sitting next to that drip Taggie, who (whatever Rupert said to the contrary) had a thumping crush on him.

  Nothing except for the occasional yawn, not even a glance in her direction, betrayed the fact that Rupert had left her bed at six o’clock that morning. Cameron wondered sometimes if she’d imagined the whole thing. She was so deep in thought, she had to be nudged in the ribs by Seb to answer a question from a pale girl from Gay Lib as to whether the lesbian shepherdess who’d appeared briefly in the last series of ‘Four Men went to Mow’ would appear in the next one.

  As Cameron sat down, the Chairman from Chipping Sodbury’s WI returned to the attack. ‘Nothing that comes from Corinium TV,’ she said, ‘is truly regional. Even Dorothy Dove speaks with a London accent.’

  Another rabble-rouser, again heavily bunged by Tony, then rose to his feet.

  ‘While we’re on the subject of accents,’ he sneered, ‘in the first week of July four people were brutally butchered by the IRA. Do we really want an Irishman, namely one Declan O’Hara, bearing in mind his left-wing attitudes and the subversive nature of many of his programmes, to be the Chief Executive of an English television company?’

  ‘Out of order,’ screamed the Venturer contingent.

  ‘Offside, put it in straight,’ roared the rugger players.

  Declan, who’d gone white, was just about to answer.

  ‘Careful,’ whispered Rupert.

  ‘I’d like the speaker to withdraw that remark,’ said Lady Gosling frostily. ‘Next question, please.’

  The Clean-Up Television Campaign, headed by the Archdeacon, then started slamming sex and violence, followed by the Bishop of Cotchester who said how concerned he was about his flock, and that he would be working with Venturer to reduce not only sex and violence, but the very widespread blasphemy on television. He was just getting into his stride when Henry Hampshire’s ancient gardener staggered to his feet.

  ‘I like to go to bed very early,’ he grumbled. ‘I do wish Corinium wouldn’t put all those sexy fil-lums on so late at night, because I and the missus can never stay awake to watch them.’

  Everyone roared with laughter, including Lady Gosling, who then clapped her hands and said it was with great regret that she had to bring this very stimulating meeting to a close as they were running out of time. They would end, she added, with a seven-minute sales pitch from each of the three contenders.

  Tony rose first, deliberately turning his back on Venturer and talking half to the platform and half to the audience.

  ‘Good evening,’ he began suavely. ‘I am the Chief Executive of – er —’ he glanced down at his notes and everyone laughed – ‘Corinium Television. We have noted,’ he went on, ‘the very perceptive and instructive points raised tonight, and, although we don’t agree with all of them, anyone who would like a further answer to his – or indeed, her —’ he smiled broadly – ‘question, please write to me personally.’

  ‘Wanker,’ muttered Rupert under his breath. He folded his arms belligerently and, with the hand that was hidden, fought a violent urge to caress the side of Taggie’s left breast which swelled so seductively beneath her violet dress. She looked so ravishing this evening, and she’d done so well to get all those strange but incredibly influential people to the meeting.

  Firmly clenching his hand away from Taggie, he looked across at Cameron, who was gazing moodily into space with a kind of deadpan, terrorist truculence. She reminded him of the girl grooms he used to pull in the old days. He desperately wanted a fuck, but he wouldn’t get Cameron tonight. Tony, overexcited by the meeting, would no doubt take advantage of that release. Rupert was finding the enforced celibacy more and more trying, and, bloody hell, what was Bas doing pulling Janey? It seemed as though he was the only person in the world behaving himself.

  Having finished a rousing spiel about Corinium’s long and honourable record, Tony was now paying tribute to ‘the thriving, creative community’ he had the privilege to lead. ‘We are aware, Ladies and Gentlemen, that there is life west of Harrods, our hearts are not in “Dallas”, nor is our HQ in London. Our company is run by people from the region, who have a special place in the Cotswolds and, indeed, in West Country life. Corinium is its own man here. We will be biased, we will fight for the West, we are pledged to serve the whole community. Above all we care.’

  He sat down to moderate cheers. Then it was Mid-West’s turn.

  A fat man with straggly white hair staggered to his feet and then took ages to find his notes. ‘That’s obviously the geography master who never found his way to London,’ whispered Rupert to Taggie.

  ‘I am deeply honoured,’ began the fat man.

  ‘Name, name,’ yelled the audience.

  ‘My name is Cedric Bonnington,’ he mumbled. ‘I hope to be Chairman of Mid-West Television.’

  ‘Well, don’t be bashful, speak up,’ shouted Tony’s rabble-rouser.

  Sadly, Cedric didn’t. In a low mumble he laboriously read out that he was very interested in all the fascinating points that had been made by the floor.

  ‘I cannot reveal who our backers are,’ he droned on, ‘but very substantial funds will be available should the very talented group, whose names I also cannot divulge at this stage, win the franchise.’

  ‘He’ll probably get it,’ said Georgie Baines to Seb Burrows.

>   ‘What about women?’ yelled the Women-in-Broadcasting lobby.

  Cedric consulted his notes. The company’s Programme Controller, whose name he also couldn’t divulge, he said, would be a woman of the widest experience.

  ‘Madame Cyn,’ yelled Rupert.

  ‘Mary Whitehouse,’ said Tony’s shop steward.

  The audience waited for more exciting revelations, and, when none materialized, egged on by the Corinium consortium, who’d all got to their feet, started to drift away. It was almost dark outside; the pubs beckoned.

  ‘No one’s going to stay and listen to Daddy,’ said Taggie in anguish, and, as Declan got up to speak, people were swarming out into the High Street.

  ‘I’d like first to answer the speaker who questioned the right of an Irishman to run an English television company,’ he began softly. ‘As much right perhaps as that great Irishman, the Duke of Wellington, to command a British army.’

  He spoke without notes. As people poured back into the hall again, the deep soft husky voice carried easily round the hall.

  ‘I am proud to be Irish,’ he went on, ‘and, to echo the words of another great Irish patriot, Irwin Cobb, I too had an ancestor who was out with the pikes in ’98. He was captured by the English and tried for treason. They hanged him by the neck until he was dead, but his soul goes marching on, transmitting to his descendants, of whom I am proud to be one, the desire to fight against tyranny whenever I come across it. I also love and honour British television. It is the best in the world. That’s why I and so many of my countrymen – Eamonn Andrews, Terry Wogan, Robert Kee, Frank Delaney, Dave Allen, Henry Kelly, Patrick Dromgoole, Gloria Hunniford – are over here, learning from it and, I hope, contributing to it.

  ‘But we still go on fighting tyranny and oppression whenever we find it. I found it in the few months I worked for Corinium. That’s why I walked out, and why, with my English friends —’ he turned and smiled briefly at the Venturer consortium – ‘I have put in a bid to oust Lord Baddingham.’