Rivals

stunningly beautiful like Maud. It must be awful looking like that, and having people getting your name wrong, and wanting to gawp all the time at your husband.

‘Where’s Grace?’ said Maud fretfully.

‘Not up yet,’ said Caitlin. ‘Said she couldn’t sleep because of the quiet. I suggested the removal men should drive their vans round and round hooting under her window to remind her of the juggernauts in Fulham. Grace is our so-called housekeeper,’ she explained to Lizzie. ‘Patrick says she ought to join the RSPCA, she’s so kind to spiders.’

‘I must go,’ said Lizzie regretfully.

‘Have another drink,’ said Maud, not looking up.

‘Have some lunch,’ said Taggie. ‘I was just going to make some omelettes.’

‘I must work,’ said Lizzie. ‘Thanks awfully. The children’ll be home soon; it must be nearly four.’

‘I’ll walk some of the way with you,’ said Caitlin. ‘Gertrude needs a walk. Do you want to come with us, Mummy?’ Her voice was suddenly conciliatory, as though she regretted cheeking her mother.

‘No thanks,’ said Maud vaguely. ‘I must measure up some windows for curtains.’

‘Curtains, indeed,’ muttered Caitlin as she and Lizzie left the room. ‘The only thing my mother measures with any efficiency is her length after parties. ‘Then, noticing Lizzie’s raised eyebrows, ‘I’m afraid I’m at the age when one tends to criticize one’s parents a lot. Sadly one can’t sever the umbilical cord gently. It has to be done with a razor blade and without an anaesthetic.’

Along a winding passage Caitlin opened a door into a large octagonal room, the base of one of the mediaeval turrets. Tall, narrow ecclesiastical windows with stained glass in the top panes provided the only interruption to shelves and shelves of books.

‘Daddy’s library,’ said Caitlin. ‘I thought, being a writer, you’d like it.’

‘How lovely,’ gasped Lizzie.

‘I think Daddy bought the house because it already had shelves in.’

They went out of the West door on the other side of the house, past stables and a clock tower with a roof covered in ferns and dark moss, through a vegetable garden which had been taken over by nettles, and an orchard whose stunted lichened trees grew no higher than seven feet, because of the constant blasting of the winds.

‘Patrick says it’s going to take a fleet of gardeners to keep this place in order,’ said Caitlin. ‘And what with my school fees, and the rewiring, and the new roof, and Mummy’s House and Garden fantasies, Daddy’s bloody well going to need his new salary.’

Out in the sunshine Lizzie noticed how pale and thin Caitlin was and thought a few terms playing games and eating stodge at a vigorous girls’ boarding school would do her no harm. Gertrude bounced ahead, plunging into the beech wood after rabbits. Certainly, slithering down the wood was easier than climbing up.

‘Is Rupert Campbell-Black as attractive as everyone says?’ asked Caitlin.

‘Yes,’ sighed Lizzie. ‘He seems to get more so.’

‘They say he was very wild in his youth.’

‘Well, he’s had a rather extended youth.’

‘And brainy.’

‘Well, street bright, and very sharp with money.’

‘My brother Patrick is like that. I have brains. Taggie has beauty. Patrick has both.’

‘Oh you’re going to be very beautiful,’ said Lizzie truthfully.

‘I may blossom,’ said Caitlin beadily. ‘But at present I am undernourished, and my teeth leave a lot to be desired. I had to make the dentist put this beastly brace on. My mother only believes in going to the dentist when one’s teeth hurt.’

‘And Taggie seems very efficient in the kitchen,’ said Lizzie. ‘Isn’t she bright?’

‘Not at all. She’s dyslexic, poor darling, hardly stumbles through Mills and Boon, and she has fearful trouble with recipe books, which is a pity, as she wants to be a cook. Patrick said it was ghastly when she was small, everyone thought she was retarded because she couldn’t read. Mummy shouted at her all the time, never thought of taking her to an educational psychologist.’

The wall at the bottom of the beech wood marked the end of Declan’s land. Caitlin scrambled over it and held out a hand to help Lizzie.

‘How beautiful,’ she said, gazing at the flat water meadows and the bustling little stream. ‘I can imagine mediaeval knights jousting here in the old days.’

She whistled to Gertrude who’d belted the other way, and who now rushed back, splashing and drinking in the stream.

‘The ghastly thing about having brilliant famous parents,’ Caitlin went on, ‘is you never feel the centre of the universe, because they’re so obsessed with their own lives. And if you do brilliantly at school, everyone nods sagely and says Declan’s daughter, it’s in the genes; and if you do badly like poor Tag, they just assume you’re lazy or bloody-minded. Tag’s self-confidence was in tatters when she left school.’

‘But she’s so beautiful,’ protested Lizzie.

‘I know, but she doesn’t realize it. She’s madly in love with Ralphie Henriques, one of Patrick’s even more brilliant friends. After months of pestering, he seduced Tag at a May Ball at Trinity this year. God, look at those blackberries!’ Caitlin started tearing them off the bushes with both hands and cramming them into her mouth.

‘I hoped Tag would tell me exactly what it was like. One can’t obtain one’s entire sexual education from the pages of Jackie Collins, but she just clammed up, and he never rang her again. Just one postcard from Cork, and nothing since. Can you imagine doing that to Tag? That’s why she waits for every post and jumps on every telephone. Patrick says Ralphie’s got someone else, some pert little blonde who reads Sophocles in the original. Poor Tag can’t even read English in the original.’

‘What about Patrick?’ asked Lizzie. ‘Does he like Trinity?’

‘He feels right there. He thinks my father has betrayed his roots working in England, and he also rather despises Daddy for being in television. God, these blackberries are good. Perhaps Rupert smiled at them.’

‘But your father’s a genius,’ said Lizzie, shocked. ‘Those interviews are works of art. ‘

‘I know, but Patrick thinks Daddy ought to write books. He’s been working on a biography of Yeats for years, and he used to write wonderful plays.’

‘What’s Patrick going to do when he leaves Trinity?’

‘He’ll write. He’s much more together than Daddy. I know Daddy makes pots of money, but it all gets spent, and he’s always having frightful rows at work. Patrick’s calmer. He’s a prose version of Daddy, really. And for someone with such high principles, he thinks nothing of running up the most enormous debts, which of course Mummy settles out of Daddy’s despised television earnings.’

‘Jolly easy to have principles when someone else picks up the bill,’ said Lizzie.

‘Right,’ said Caitlin. ‘Patrick’s also a bit smug because he attracts the opposite sex so effortlessly. Do you think Gertrude will get lonely in the country? Should we get her a dog friend?’

They had crossed the stream now, to the same side as Rupert’s house. Despite the lack of wind, thistledown was drifting everywhere as though a pillow had just burst. Panting up the slope, and turning in their tracks, they could just see the creepered battlements and turrets of The Priory above its ruff of beech trees, now warmed by the late afternoon sun. Climbing had also given Caitlin’s pale freckled face a tinge of colour.

‘Think of all those nuns living there in the middle ages,’ she sighed ecstatically, ‘gazing across the valley, yearning for Rupert Campbell-Black’s ancestors.’

Lizzie decided not to spoil such a romantic concept by pointing out that Rupert’s house hadn’t been built until the seventeenth century.

‘It is a romantic house, isn’t it?’ said Caitlin, still gazing at The Priory. ‘Exciting things must happen to us all — even Tag — in a place like that.’

‘I’m sure they will,’ said Lizzie.

‘I’d better go home now,’ said Caitlin. ‘Can I come and see you next time I’m back for the weekend?’

Lizzie floated home. What richness, what a fascinating afternoon. The prospect of new friends excited her these days almost as much as new boyfriends had when she was young. She was still bubbling over when James got home later than usual.

‘What did you think of my programme?’ he asked.

Lizzie had to confess she’d forgotten to watch it, because she’d dropped in and had a drink with the