Rivals

‘If she weren’t going on,’ said Cameron, ‘Rupert would have come and told us.’

‘He was always good at boxing difficult horses,’ said Bas, who had changed into his stage clothes and was now raring to go in and comfort Maud.

As her door opened, everyone surged forward. Coming out, Rupert put a finger to his lips, then made a thumbs up sign: ‘Has anyone got any eyedrops?’

‘Mine are by appointment to the Queen Mother,’ said Monica, diving into her dressing-room to get them. ‘They jolly well make your eyes sparkle.’

46

Out in the foyer, Tony was now welcoming the Mayor and Mayoress and the Reverend Fergus Penney from the IBA, who was visiting Cotchester for the performance.

‘I have to warn you there may be hold-ups,’ purred Tony happily. ‘Declan O’Hara, who usually misses the boat, has missed the plane this time and failed to turn up on the night of his poor wife’s famous comeback. She’s gone to pieces and is refusing to go on, so the understudy is waiting in the wings. I’m afraid one really can’t rely on Venturer,’ he added to Fergus Penney, ‘but at least we can all pass the time pleasantly enough having a glass of champagne.’

Steering them through a door marked Private, he found his latest acquisition wearing a new black and gold dress to complement her newly streaked hair and getting stuck into the Bollinger.

‘Can I introduce Lizzie Vereker,’ said Tony warmly. ‘I told you she and James are fronting our new series to discourage the spread of AIDS: “How to Stay Married”, didn’t I, Fergus?’ he added to the Prebendary, who was now licking his thin lips at the sight of Lizzie’s curves.

‘Norman and I could give you a few tips on that,’ said the Mayoress. ‘We’re celebrating our forty-fifth next week.’

‘You must come on Lizzie’s programme then,’ said Tony, raising his glass. ‘Cotchester’s most distinguished married couple.’

I can’t bear it, thought Lizzie, allowing her glass to be filled up. In this dress she felt as though she’d been gift-wrapped at Harrods. She longed to get out into the foyer and see if Freddie had arrived. Because of James’s new uxoriousness and a general tightening up of security, she and Freddie had only managed to talk on the telephone this week.

Outside in the auditorium Sarah Stratton was spinning out the signing of autographs. Anything not to be trapped in the middle of the second row with Paul and thus not able to accost James as he came past. James, absolutely livid at being mistaken for the manager by some enraged theatregoer whose seats had been double- booked, was now trying to explain the extremely complicated plot of The Merry Widow to the viewers.

The Bishop, mingling with his flock and pressing the flesh, misconstrued Freddie’s abstractedness as animosity and wondered darkly whether Rupert had passed on his remarks about Freddie being a rough diamond.

As the five-minute bell went, Tony glanced at his watch. Seven thirty-five. Bugger, they were hardly going to be late at all. At least they could rely on the understudy to be perfectly awful.

‘I think we’d better find our seats,’ he said.

Charles, wearing pantaloons so tight he felt he was standing inches above the ground, peered through a chink in the thick Prussian-blue velvet curtains, as he and Monica and the chorus, all in evening dress, waited in the wings to go on.

‘It’s absolutely packed,’ he reported in a hollow voice. ‘People are standing at the back and in the side aisles. The premiere of “The Messiah” in Dublin was such a sell-out that the men were told to leave off their swords. Pity that people weren’t frisked at the door today. I bet your husband’s carrying a long knife, Monica dear. No, it’s no use looking reproving, he’s given me the bullet, I can say what I like,’ and, turning, he stuck a rather green tongue out through the curtains as Tony came in.

Taggie helped Maud pile up her hair with two diamante combs and zipped her into her slinky black ball dress. Then, leaving Rupert and Bas to do up her jewellery, she slipped into her seat. There were only two empty seats between her and Cameron, but they should have been inhabited by Rupert and Declan, so the gap seemed wider than the Atlantic. Judging by Cameron’s set profile it was obvious that she was seething because Rupert wasn’t beside her, particularly as a smirking Tony had just rolled up with the Mayor and was sitting directly behind them.

Cameron was seething even more that, after not seeing her for three months, Tony should catch her when she’d only had a few minutes to change and hadn’t showered or washed her hair. She was wearing the smoking jacket which Taggie’d tipped dessert over last year and which didn’t evoke very happy memories either. It definitely needed clean hair and very dramatic make-up to carry it off. She felt horribly butch. Dame Enid, who was conducting the orchestra in a dinner jacket, had been giving her some very hot looks, but at least she didn’t look as awful as Taggie, who must have lost a stone and was wearing a dreadful brown dress that was just the wrong length and made her look completely flat-chested.

There was a gap on Taggie’s left too. Where the hell was Caitlin? wondered Taggie. She’d arrived by taxi half an hour ago and, despite promising to behave, had promptly disappeared.

All round, Taggie could hear the roar and sizzle of anticipation as the lights went out and the orchestra started. The cameramen, who’d been forced into dinner jackets by Tony, took up their positions behind their cameras, the soundmen made a final check of the microphones, as Caitlin, apologizing profusely, clambered along an irritated row of people and collapsed panting by Taggie’s side.

‘Do up the buttons of your shirt,’ said Taggie furiously. In the row behind, from the other side, having kicked the Mayoress in the varicose veins and trodden on the Prebendary’s bunions, the Hon Archie, the bow of his black tie under his left ear, collapsed panting beside a bootfaced Tony.

Next moment Tony’s bootfaced expression turned to one of apoplexy: ‘How dare you wear a made-up tie?’ he hissed, as the Prussian-blue velvet curtains creaked back on the Pontevedrian Embassy in Paris. The Ambassador was giving a ball, and the guest of honour about to arrive was the Merry Widow.

After a rousing opening number by the chorus, it was Monica’s and Charles’s turn. Monica, playing the ambassador’s beautiful ex-actress wife, couldn’t act for toffee. But by tackling the part with the same breezy competence with which she ran charity committees or bathed labradors, she gave the rest of the cast a much- needed confidence. And Charles looked so sweet in his tight pantaloons, swearing eternal and extremely camp devotion, that it was rather like a skittish Billy Bunter getting off with the head girl.

‘My marriage is sacred to me,’ warbled Monica, to the smirks of the audience, who all knew she was married to Tony.

‘If marriage is sacred to you,’ sang back Charles, lasciviously stroking her bare arm, ‘there’s not very much I can do,’ to even more smirks from the audience, who nearly all knew Charles was gay. And they liked it even better when his moustache fell off and he nearly split his pantaloons bending over to pick it up.

‘What a lot of gold fillings Monica’s got,’ whispered Caitlin to Taggie, ‘and, waving that baton, Dame Enid looks as though she’s playing Stickie with Gertrude. When’s Mother Courage coming on?’

‘Any minute,’ said Taggie, who was praying.

Maud, clinging to both Bas’s and Rupert’s hands, stood shivering like a whippet in the wings. Although her black velvet dress was Turn-of-the-Century in fashion, Basil, for some reason, was dressed as a Regency buck. The longest legs in Gloucestershire were set off by gleaming black boots and pantaloons, the cut of his slate-blue coat would have had Beau Brummel in raptures and his sleek black hair had been coaxed forward into Byronic curls. He looked the perfect Georgette Heyer hero.

‘You look gorgeous,’ he whispered to Maud.