Rivals

catch a falling leaf, you get a happy day? Let’s see if we can catch thirty, so we can give Daddy a really happy November when he wakes up.’

‘Easy peasy,’ said Tabitha, leaping forward as a yellow sycamore leaf pirouetted through the air towards her, then, caught by a puff of wind, dummied round her and fluttered to the ground.

‘It’s harder than it looks,’ panted Marcus, reaching out as a twig of ash leaves floated tantalizingly out of his grasp. ‘Would those have counted as seven?’

‘Not really,’ said Taggie.

‘Bugger,’ screamed Tab, as she just missed a beech leaf.

‘Hush,’ said Taggie. ‘We mustn’t wake Daddy.’

Silently they raced round the wood trying to suppress their screams of joy whenever they managed to catch a leaf. After a particularly piercing yell, when Tab tripped over a bramble cable but managed to hang on to a wand of chestnut leaves, Rupert woke up; but he pretended to be asleep. Watching Taggie, gambolling long-legged over the beech leaves, ponytail flying, looking, as the Manager had thought, not a day over fourteen, he was suddenly kneed in the groin with longing.

‘Here you are, Daddy,’ said Tabitha, her hands full of leaves, ‘a whole happy month for you.’

Rupert, who privately thought that the only thing that could make him happy at the moment was a whole month in bed with Taggie, said thank you very much.

‘Can we go and see the new Woody Allen?’ asked Tabitha.

Rupert looked at his watch: ‘It’s nearly four o’clock. You’ll be very late back.’ The last thing he wanted to do was to go to the cinema.

‘We can go on our way home,’ pleaded Tabitha.

‘We’ve done our homework,’ said Marcus.

Rupert turned to Taggie who said she’d adore to see it; anything to prolong the day with Rupert.

‘I’m going to sit next to Taggie,’ said Tabitha, seizing her hand.

‘I’m going to sit next to her too,’ said Marcus, taking her other hand.

‘If she sits on my knee, you can both sit next to her,’ said Rupert.

Severely jolted, he felt it was increasingly necessary to make a joke about the whole thing.

The Woody Allen was extremely funny, but Taggie hardly took any of it in, she was so aware of Rupert slumped in the seat beyond Tabitha gazing totally unmoved at the screen. How awful for Rupert being left by Helen and losing these heavenly children, living alone by himself in that big house.

‘One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so,’ sang Tabitha as they drove home.

Taggie felt Rupert’s loss far more acutely when she met Helen, who was simply the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, with huge serious yellow eyes and long red hair drawn back in two combs from her freckled face, and incredibly slim ankles and wrists. She had the same colouring as Maud, reflected Taggie, but while Maud cavorted untrainably through life like a red setter bestowing her favours indiscriminately, Helen would be far more fastidious and sparing with her affections. Helen was like a red deer. If you tamed and won the confidence of anything so delicate and nervous, you’d feel incredibly proud.

But before she had much time to observe Helen or her husband, Malise, who seemed very old, Taggie was dragged off to the stables by Tabitha to meet Biscuit and Dollop. Then she had to see Marcus’s room and then Tabitha’s room, both extraordinarily tidy (in fact, the whole house was incredibly tidy for a Sunday evening), by which time it was well past the children’s bedtime.

Back in the drawing-room, Taggie found Helen tapping her beautifully shod foot and looking at the clock, and Rupert standing in front of an unlit fire, holding an empty glass and looking absolutely glazed.

‘What would you like to drink?’ Malise asked Taggie.

Taggie glanced at Rupert, who almost imperceptibly moved his head in the direction of the door.

‘Nothing, thank you very much,’ she said.

‘We must go,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ve got to get this child home.’

So the day was to end just like that. Taggie suddenly felt suicidal. Malise, seeming to sense her depression, said, ‘Helen and I are tremendous fans of your father’s. I do hope he gets the franchise. Corinium’s programmes are absolutely ghastly.’

‘Oh, The Dream was excellent the other night,’ protested Helen. ‘Marcus said Cameron Cook had something to do with that, Rupert. You must bring her over sometime. I’d love to discuss the production with her. It was a most original interpretation. They set it in Victorian England and had some fascinating parallels between Queen Victoria and John Brown and Titania and Bottom.’

Rupert stifled a huge yawn.

‘I think Taggie and Rupert want to go, darling,’ said Malise gently, putting his arm round Helen’s shoulders.

He has the most charming smile, thought Taggie. I can see why she finds him attractive, but not compared with Rupert, and he is terribly old. The children came to see them off.

‘Promise, promise, we can see you next time we come over,’ said Tabitha, clinging to her like a monkey.

‘Thank you so much for the fudge,’ said Marcus.

‘Rupert is awful,’ said Helen, having packed the children upstairs to have baths. ‘That girl must still be at school.’

‘She’s a bit older than that, but not much,’ said Malise, straightening the Sunday papers. ‘D’you know, she gives me the same ghastly sense of forboding I had when I first met you?’

‘I hope you haven’t fallen in love with her too,’ said Helen, somewhat too archly.

‘No. One just knows he’s going to break her heart,’ said Malise grimly, ‘and feels powerless to do anything about it.’

‘He may have mellowed,’ said Helen. ‘She’s the first girl he’s ever brought here, and the kids obviously adore her.’

Malise shook his head. ‘He’s like a hound. You can’t domesticate him. Hunting’ll always be in his blood.’

Rupert was very quiet on the drive back to Penscombe. Taggie, feeling utterly miserable because the day was almost over and the Aston-Martin seemed to be gobbling up the miles, assumed he was merely depressed because his ravishing wife and children didn’t live with him any more. Rupert, however, for the first time in his life, was battling seriously with his conscience.

Taggie was Declan’s teenage daughter; he was committed to Cameron, who was already paranoid about Taggie, and there were deadly serious things like franchises to be won.

Then, in the light from a street-lamp in Cheltenham, he caught sight of Taggie. Everything seemed to turn upwards, her nose, her long sooty eyelashes, her adorably short upper lip, and those beautifully soft breasts, which he’d dreamed of the other night. His conscience lost.

‘Would you like some dinner?’

‘Oh yes, please,’ said Taggie joyfully. ‘If you’re sure you’re not too tired and I look smart enough?’

‘Never, never get smart,’ said Rupert. ‘I loathe done-up women.’

‘They’re such adorable children,’ said Taggie. ‘And so beautiful. Not surprising really with such a beautiful mother.’ In the darkness of the car, now they were out of the town, it seemed easier to talk. ‘Is it absolutely agony every time you see her again?’

‘Agony,’ said Rupert soulfully. Then, shooting a sideways glance at Taggie, he explained, ‘Because she bores the fucking tits off me.’

Taggie gave a gasp of shocked laughter.

‘I can’t think how the hell I stayed married to her for seven years. While you were upstairs, she gave me the entire plot of the Italian film they’d seen that afternoon, and, if Malise hadn’t shut her up, we’d have had a five-act analysis of Midsummer Night’s Dream. How he puts up with it!’

‘He seems very nice,’ said Taggie, ‘but he’s almost like a grandfather to the children.’

‘Thirty years older than Helen,’ said Rupert, ‘but he’s made her very happy.’

‘And what happened to you after she walked out?’ asked Taggie.

‘Oh well, I had one or two fish of my own I was frying at the time,’ admitted Rupert. ‘But the fat began to spit too much, so I backed off. Then I had a long stint with an engaging tramp called Beattie Johnson, and then a few games of tennis with Sarah Stratton.’