Rivals

O’Haras.

‘Did Declan say anything about me or the programme?’ demanded James.

‘No,’ said Lizzie.

‘Didn’t you tell them you were married to me?’ said James, utterly scandalized.

‘I forgot,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’m awfully sorry, but there was so much going on, and the O’Haras are just so glamorous.’

9

Declan O’Hara had two obsessions in life: his work, and, rare in a profession that tends to regard a broken marriage as the only essential qualification, his wife.

He was born in a thatched cottage on a green hillside in the Wicklow mountains, where his father scratched a living from the land. When Declan was ten, his father broke his back falling from a tractor when drunk, and was thus rendered useless for heavy work, so the family moved back to Cork, his Protestant mother’s home town. Here his mother proceeded to bring up Declan and his three brothers by taking endless cleaning and secretarial jobs, aided by occasional handouts from her parents. Her one joy in an exhausting life was Declan, who fulfilled his promise at school by winning a history scholarship to Trinity, Dublin. Soon he was writing poetry and plays, working freelance for the Irish Times and sending money home.

One evening in his second year at Trinity, he dropped into the theatre to see The Playboy of the Western World. Maud, with her red hair and her amazing green eyes, was the toast of Dublin as Pegeen Mike. Declan went round in a daze for three days afterwards, then sat down, wrote a play for her in a month, and posted it off. Impressed by the play, Maud asked him backstage and was even more impressed by this roaring black-eyed boy with his volcanic moods and his gift for words. The theatre put on the play for a three-month run. It was an instant success, with Maud’s extra radiance being noted by all the critics. By the sixth week she was pregnant and married Declan as soon as the play came off. Although stunned with amazement and joy that this glorious creature was his, Declan soon realized there was no way he could support her and a baby by writing plays, so he junked his academic career and got a full-time job, doing profiles on the Irish Times.

There was talk of Maud returning to the stage when Patrick grew older, but then Taggie came along, and then Caitlin. Habitually strapped for cash, Declan moved to television, where, although his family in Cork thought he was joining the circus, he soon became a star. Snapped up by the BBC in London, that milker of Irish talent, in a year he was writing and fronting his own programmes, culminating in a series of interviews which had promptly climbed to the top of the ratings and remained there for two years.

For not only was Declan the most natural thing ever seen on television, but, unlike other presenters and chat show hosts, he never showed off or talked about himself, and he always did his homework. To get public figures, as a result of this quiet, sympathetic, utterly relentless probing, to reveal facets of their character never seen before made for spellbinding television.

These revelations, however, did not always please the BBC who got rattled if a Sinn Fein leader appeared too attractive or a politician too unpleasant. Known as the terror of Lime Grove because of his black glooms and his sporadic bouts of heavy drinking, Declan bitterly resented interference from above. He finally walked out because the Governors, heavily leant on by the Home Secretary, pulled his interview with Ian Paisley, and because Tony Baddingham offered to triple his salary and Declan couldn’t see any other way of paying his tax bill or ever clearing his overdraft.

After his early childhood in Wicklow, too, Declan had always yearned to live in the country. He truly believed it would be cheaper than London, that he would have more time to spend with his family, particularly Maud, and to finish his biography of Yeats.

Maud herself was lazy, egotistical and selfish. She idled her time away reading novels, and token scripts, spending money and talking. Playing second fiddle, on the other hand, is not an easy part. When she married Declan, she had been the star, pursued by half the men in Dublin, and the mistress of the Director. Then she had to watch Declan rise to international fame, while her career dwindled away through lethargy and terror of failure, on the excuse that she was always too busy with the children. Underneath, she was desperately jealous of Declan’s success, and one reason he had never become spoilt was because Maud showed no interest in his career and was constantly mobbing him up.

There was a tremendously strong erotic pull between them, but, even after twenty-one years, Declan still felt he hadn’t really won her. He was also in a Catch-22 situation. In order to support Maud’s wanton extravagance he was forced to work all hours, which meant she got bored and spent more, and, to goad him, toyed with other men. Another reason Declan had moved to the country was that last year one of her toyings had got out of hand.

A week after the O’Haras moved into The Priory, Declan started work at Corinium. He didn’t sleep at all the night before. It was a long time since February, when he’d accepted the job, but Maud had immediately started spending in the expectation of riches, culminating in a vast Farewell to Fulham party. Christ knew how he was to pay for that, or for all Maud’s re-decorating schemes.

Nor had his friends at the BBC been backward in telling him that Tony Baddingham was a shit, or that ITV, notoriously more reactionary and restrictive than the Beeb, would be far harder to work for. In the end, too, as he had been desolate to leave Ireland, he was sad to leave the BBC, particularly as so many of the staff had come out on strike when his programme on Paisley had been axed. They had then held a succession of riotous and tearful leaving parties, finally clubbing together to give him the Complete Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. But all his life Declan had walked away from the safe thing — that was his instinct.

As he lay in the huge double bed, smoking one cigarette after another, watching dawn creep through the curtainless windows, Maud slept peacefully beside him. Her red hair spilled over the rose-pink pillow case, the whole of the dark-blue duvet was wrapped round her hips, and her breasts fell sideways on to a pale-green bottom sheet. Nothing ever matched in their house, reflected Declan.

He longed to make love to her to ease the panic and tension, but there was no way she’d wake before ten o’clock. She was as obsessive about sleep as he was about work. Tony had told him to roll up at eleven, but knowing work was the only way out of his black panic, Declan decided to go in early. He was expecting a pile of Johnny Friedlander’s cuttings from America.

Thank God for Taggie, he thought, as he put on a beautifully ironed black and green checked shirt. Grace the housekeeper, who also never rose before ten, had an ability to singe or iron buttons off everything she touched.

As he went into the kitchen to pick up his car keys, Taggie came barefoot and hollow-eyed down the back stairs in her nightgown.

‘Daddy, you shouldn’t be up yet.’

‘Couldn’t sleep. Thought I might as well go in.’

‘You must have some breakfast, or at least a cup of coffee.’

When he shook his head, she put her arms round him.

‘It’ll be OK, I know it will. Remember you’re the best in the world.’

Declan reached the Corinium Television building at a quarter to eight, just as the night security man on the car park was about to go off. Seeing a pair of vaguely familiar eyes looking over the half-open window of the absolutely filthy Mini, he raised the horizontal pole, and, having waved Declan through, went back to enjoying Page Three of the Sun.

Walking through the revolving front door, absolutely sick with nerves, Declan found the place deserted except for a cleaner down the passage morosely pushing a mop, and a young man in pink trousers arranging roses on the marble-topped reception desk.

Aware that every other girl who worked in the building was at home washing her hair, putting on her prettiest clothes, and emptying scent bottles over herself in anticipation of Declan’s arrival, the receptionist had just nipped down to Make-up to re-do her eyes before the hordes started arriving at nine.