boyfriend: ‘He’s cooking supper for me tonight, cod in cheese sauce out of a packet. He’s got such charisma.’
Lord Wooton was now being ushered in by the floor manager. He had plainly had too much to drink with Tony, but Make-up had toned him down with green foundation, and blacked out his greying sideboards. His revoltingly sensual face with the big red pouting lower lip was just like one of Tony’s orchids, thought Declan, as he rose to his feet to welcome him.
‘Very warm night,’ said Lord Wooton.
‘Very,’ said Declan.
The introductory package, which Cameron had written, was full of nice stills and clips of Lord Wooton romping with cats, visiting children in hospital, playing cricket with grandsons, watching the first bricks of various buildings being laid, and collecting an OBE at the Palace. He was plainly delighted.
‘Don’t know where they dug up all those old photographs,’ he said untruthfully.
‘Ten seconds to end of opening package, Declan,’ said Daysee from the control room.
Surreptitiously Declan removed his earpiece and put it in his pocket. His first question was sycophancy itself.
‘As the leading property developer in Gloucestershire, probably the whole of the West Country, you must be proud of your achievement.’
Maurice Wooton put his hands together happily.
‘One is only as good as the people who work for one, Declan,’ he said smoothly. ‘You must know that. I have first-rate people, hand-picked of course.’
‘Pity you don’t take better care of them,’ said Declan amiably.
He then proceeded to carve Maurice Wooton up, starting with one of his managers who’d been sacked while he was in hospital recovering from open-heart surgery, then proceeding to another who’d been given no compensation when he broke his back falling off some scaffolding.
Tony rang Cameron in the control box.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he roared. ‘Tell him to ask Maurice about his fucking grandchildren.’
‘I can’t get through to him,’ yelled Cameron. ‘He’s taken out his earpiece.’
‘Well, tell the floor manager to tell him to put it fucking back in again.’
Ignoring all Maurice Wooton’s spluttering denials, Declan moved on to illegal takeovers, shady deals, and then produced a just-published secret Town Hall report, which claimed that, despite a huge grant from the Council, his firm had built a block of flats cheap to faulty specifications.
Temporarily speechless now, Maurice Wooton was mouthing like a great purple bull frog.
‘Another even more unattractive aspect of your business career,’ went on Declan relentlessly, ‘was the way you bribed three Labour councillors in the housing department at Cotchester Town Hall to give you the contract for the tower block development on Bankside.’
‘This is preposterous,’ exploded Maurice Wooton.
‘You deny it?’
‘Of course I do.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Declan could see the floor manager making frantic signals for him to replace his earpiece.
Ignoring them, he said: ‘Why, then, do Councillor Bridie, Councillor Yallop, and Councillor Rogers have five thousand pounds entered on their bank statements, paid in by you from a Swiss bank account? Here are the photostats of the bank statements, the cheques, and your letters to them.’ Declan brandished them under Maurice Wooton’s hairy expanding crimson nostrils, then threw them down on the table. ‘Thank God there are some Town Hall officials left with integrity.’
Cameron was so insane with rage, she stubbed her cigarette out by mistake on the hand of the vision mixer, who, screaming, pressed the wrong button, which ran in telecine of a lot of very fat schoolgirls doing an eightsome reel.
‘Go back to one, take fucking one,’ screamed Cameron.
The schoolgirls disappeared in mid-dance to be replaced by Maurice Wooton, standing up and shouting at Declan that the whole thing was a trumped-up pack of lies, and he was going home to ring his lawyers. Next moment he’d stormed out, leaving the studio in uproar. Declan sat turned to stone in his chair.
To their great disappointment, Corinium’s viewers were then treated to soothing music and a film showing close-ups of Cotchester’s wild flowers, so they missed Tony roaring into the studio, so angry he could hardly get the words out.
‘I’ve spent five years courting that man,’ he spluttered. ‘He was just about to join the Board and put fifteen million into our satellite project.’
Declan rose to his feet, towering over Tony.
‘You should have given me time to research him properly,’ he said coldly. ‘I might have found something nice to ask him, but I doubt it.’ And with that, he walked out of the studio.
Back at The Priory, Rupert, wiping his eyes, turned to Maud: ‘That was the best television programme I’ve seen for years and free schoolgirls thrown in, too. After Tony Baddingham, Maurice Wooton is without doubt the biggest shit in England, and your husband is the first socialist I’ve ever really admired. The Corinium switchboard must be absolutely jammed, or “preserved”, as dear Valerie would say, with congratulatory calls.’
At that moment the telephone rang. Rupert picked it up.
‘Brilliant programme,’ said a voice. ‘It’s the
‘What did I tell you?’ said Rupert, handing the receiver to Maud. ‘Don’t look so cross,’ he added to Taggie. ‘I’ll nip home in a minute and get your father another bottle.’
After Rupert had returned with the whisky, and he and Bas had left, Taggie watched her mother go to the hall mirror, fluff up her hair on top and smooth the dress over her hips, before sitting down at the drawing-room piano. She must be very drunk, thought Taggie, judging by the number of wrong notes.
What on earth could she give her father for supper, she wondered wearily, as she started to load the washing-up machine. Perhaps she ought to accept Bas’s offer of a job, and get out and meet people. She couldn’t eat her heart out for Ralphie for ever. She heard the front door bang. Going into the hall, she saw Declan gazing into the drawing-room at Maud playing Schumann in the dress she’d worn when they were first married, living blissfully on no money in Ireland. Her hair almost touched the piano stool.
Putting his hands on her shoulder, he said, ‘Why did you put that on?’
‘Grice and I were tidying away some of my old clothes.’
‘You look beautiful.’
Schumann halted abruptly, as Declan’s hands slid under the pie-frill collar. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
As Maud walked upstairs in front of him, his hands slid up between her bare thighs:
‘Christ, you’re wet.’
Maud smiled sleepily. ‘I’ve been thinking all evening about your coming home.’
14
Tony would have sacked any other member of his staff for savaging Maurice Wooton like that. As it was he spent the weekend poring over Declan’s contract with the lawyers. Unfortunately there was no clause about not presenting his victims with unpalatable truths. So in the end Tony merely wrote Declan a sharp note accusing him of misconduct and warning him that if he stepped out of line a second and third time he’d be out on his ear.
Tony’s guns were further spiked by the Government immediately ordering an investigation into Cotchester Town Hall’s Housing policy, and by the very favourable press coverage of the programme and Corinium in particular.
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