Jilly Cooper: Rivals

DERMOT MACBRIDE

A playwright and Angry Not-So-Young man.

JOYCE MADDEN

Lord Baddingham’s secretary, Corinium Television.

MRS MAKEPIECE

A ‘treasure’ who cleans for Valerie Jones and Lizzie Vereker.

KEVIN MAKEPIECE

Her son.

TRACEY MAKEPIECE

Her daughter.

SALLY MAPLES

Head of Children’s Programmes, Yorkshire Television.

MIKE MEADOWS

Head of Sport, Corinium Television.

MRS MENZIES-SCOTT

Ex-head of the Women’s Institute, a member of the IBA.

GERALD MIDDLETON

Parliamentary Private Secretary to Rupert Campbell-Black.

DECLAN O’HARA

A television megastar.

MAUD O’HARA

His ex-actress wife.

PATRICK O’HARA

His son, an undergraduate at Trinity Dublin.

AGATHA (TAGGIE)

O’HARA

His elder daughter.

CAITLIN O’HARA

His younger daughter.

ORTRUD

Yet another of the Verekers’ comely nannies.

CYRIL PEACOCK

Lord Baddingham’s PA and sometime Press Officer, Corinium Television.

THE VERY REVEREND

FERGUS PENNEY

An ex-Prebendary of the Church of England, and a member of the IBA.

PERCY

Lord Baddingham’s chauffeur.

PASCOE RAWLINGS

The most powerful theatrical agent in London.

BARTON SINCLAIR

Director of

The Merry Widow.

SKIP

A beautiful American lawyer.

LORD SMITH

An ex-Secretary of the TGWU.

DAME ENID SPINK

A distinguished composer and Professor of Music at Cotchester University.

PAUL STRATTON

Tory MP for Cotchester. An ex-Cabinet Minister.

SARAH STRATTON

His ravishing second wife and ex-secretary.

SYDNEY

Rupert’s driver.

URSULA

Declan O’Hara’s secretary.

JAMES VEREKER

Anchorman of ‘Cotswold Round-Up’, Corinium Television.

LIZZIE VEREKER

His wife, a novelist.

ELEANOR VEREKER

His daughter.

SEBASTIAN VEREKER

His son.

HAROLD WHITE

Director of Programmes, London Weekend Television.

MAURICE WOOTON

A bent Gloucestershire property millionaire.

Sitting in the Concorde departure lounge at Heathrow on a perfect blue June morning, Anthony, second Baron Baddingham, Chairman and Managing Director of Corinium Television, should have been perfectly happy. He was blessed with great wealth, a title, a brilliant career, a beautiful flat in Kensington, houses in Gloucestershire and Tuscany, a loyal, much-admired wife, three charming children and a somewhat demanding mistress, to whom he had just bidden a long farewell on the free telephone beside him.

He was about to fly on his favourite aeroplane, Concorde, to his favourite city, New York, to indulge in his favourite pastime — selling Corinium’s programmes to American television and raising American money to make more programmes. Tony Baddingham was a great believer in using Other People’s Money, or OPM as he called it; then if a project bombed, someone else picked up the bill.

As a final bonus, neatly folded beside him were the morning papers, which he’d already read in the Post House Hotel, and which all contained glowing reports of Corinium’s past six months’ results, announced yesterday.

Just as he had been checking out of the Post House an hour earlier, however, Tony’s perfect pleasure had been ruined by the sight of his near neighbour and long-term rival, Rupert Campbell-Black, checking in. He was scribbling his signature with one hand and holding firmly on to a rather grubby but none-the-less ravishing girl with the other.

The girl, who had chipped nail polish, wildly tangled blonde hair, mascara smudges under her eyes, and a deep suntan, had obviously just been pulled out of some other bed and was giggling hysterically.

‘Ru-pert,’ she wailed, ‘there simply isn’t time; you’ll miss the plane.’

‘It’ll wait,’ said Rupert, and, gathering up his keys, started to drag her towards the lift. As the doors closed, like curtains coming down on the first act of a play, Tony could see the two of them glued together in a passionate embrace.

A deeply competitive man, Tony had felt dizzy with jealousy. He had seldom, particularly since he had inherited the title and become Chief Executive of Corinium, had any difficulty attracting women, but he’d never attracted anything so wantonly desirable and desiring as that grubby, vaguely familiar blonde.

‘More coffee, Lord Baddingham?’ One of the beautiful attendants in the Concorde Lounge interrupted Tony’s brooding. He shook his head, comforted by the obvious admiration in her voice.

‘Shouldn’t we be boarding?’ he asked.

‘We’ll be a few minutes late. There was a slight engineering problem. They’re just doing a last-minute check.’

Tony glanced round the departure lounge, filled with businessmen and American tourists, and noticed a pale, redheaded young man in a grey pinstripe suit, who had stopped his steady flow of writing notes on a foolscap pad and was looking apprehensively at his watch.

Boarding the plane twenty minutes later, Tony found himself sitting up at the front on an inside seat with a Jap immersed in a portable computer on his right. Across the gangway next to the window sat the young man in the pinstripe suit. He was even paler now and looking distinctly put out.

‘Good morning, Lord Baddingham,’ said a stewardess, handing Tony that day’s newly-flown-in copy of the Wall Street Journal.

‘Engineering fault sorted out?’ asked Tony, as the engines started revving up.

Not quite meeting his eyes, the girl nodded brightly; then, looking out of the window, she seemed to relax as a black car raced across the tarmac. Next there was a commotion, as a light, flat, familiar drawl could be heard down the gangway:

‘Frightfully sorry to hold you all up; traffic was diabolical.’

All the stewardesses seemed to converge on the new arrival, fighting to carry his newspaper and put his hand luggage up in the locker.

‘Won’t you be needing your briefcase, Minister?’ asked a male steward, shimmying down the gangway.

Rupert Campbell-Black shook his head. ‘No thanks, sweetheart.’

‘Have a nice zizz then,’ said the male steward, going crimson with pleasure at the endearment.

As the doors slammed shut, Rupert collapsed into the seat across the gangway from Tony. Wearing a crumpled cream suit, a blue striped shirt, dark glasses and with an eighth of an inch of stubble on his chin, he looked more like a rock star than one of Her Majesty’s ministers.

‘Terribly sorry, Gerald,’ he murmured to the pale young man in the pinstripe suit. ‘There was a terrible pile-up on the M4.’

Smiling thinly, Gerald removed a blonde hair from Rupert’s lapel.

‘I really must buy you an alarm clock for Christmas, Minister. If you’d missed that lunchtime speech, we’d have been in real stück. Good of them to hold the plane.’

‘Thank Christ they did.’ Looking round, Rupert saw Tony Baddingham and grinned. ‘Why, it’s the big Baddingham wolf.’

‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’ said Tony disapprovingly.

Both men required each other’s goodwill. Rupert, as an MP within Tony’s television company’s territory, needed the coverage, whereas Tony needed Rupert’s recommendation to the Government that he was running a respectable company. But it didn’t make either like the other any better.

‘Bloody good results you had this morning,’ said Rupert, fastening his seat belt. ‘I’d better buy some Corinium shares.’

Slightly mollified, Tony congratulated Rupert on his recent appointment as Tory Minister for Sport.

Rupert shrugged. ‘The PM’s shit-scared about football hooliganism — seems to think I can come up with some magic formula.’