Rivals

hairdressers, with her hair set in a mass of snaky curls.

‘It looks lovely, Mummy,’ said Taggie.

‘It looks gross,’ muttered Caitlin.

The telephone rang. It was Bas Baddingham.

‘Darling Maud, may I bring my new new lady?’

‘Of course,’ said Maud. ‘More the merrier. Damn,’ she added as she put down the telephone, ‘another really attractive spare man paired up. Who the hell’s going to dance with Cameron Cook?’

‘You haven’t asked her?’ said Taggie in horror, thinking of the wrecked smoking jacket. ‘Daddy can’t stand her.’

‘How many d’you reckon are coming?’ said Patrick, giving a glass of Moet to each of the pink and white Etonians, who were both staring at Taggie.

‘About two to three hundred,’ said Maud airily.

‘But we haven’t hired nearly enough plates or knives or forks or anything,’ said Taggie aghast, ‘or got anywhere to seat them.’

Maud turned to Patrick. ‘Pop across the valley to Rupert’s and borrow some,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know he was coming too,’ whispered Taggie, even more horrified. ‘I thought he was away skiing.’

‘He’s come back specially for the party,’ said Maud dreamily. ‘It was too windy for him to land the helicopter but I’ve just seen him driving through Penscombe. Well, if there’s nothing else for me to do, I’m going upstairs to paint my nails.’ As she went out, running her eyes over the table seating, she caught sight of Rupert’s cards on both sides of Caitlin.

Tearing one up in a rage, she put the other back on her right. ‘You will not sit next to Rupert, Caitlin, you’re going to sit next to Archie Baddingham and like it.’ She turned back to Taggie.

‘Has Grace made up the beds for all Patrick’s friends?’

‘Someone insulted her in the pub at lunchtime,’ said Taggie. ‘Introduced her as Declan O’Hara’s scrubber, so she’s gone to bed in a huff.’

‘Well, get her up,’ snapped Maud. ‘At least you’ve got Valerie Jones’s char and her two children and that butler Reg and his friends coming to help, but you better make up some more beds.’

‘They can all sleep in armchairs,’ said Patrick soothingly as he gathered up his new car keys. ‘I’ll go and borrow those plates from Rupert.’

‘I’ve made up a bed for Ralphie in the spare room,’ said Taggie, blushing.

At six-thirty Declan returned home having recorded an interview with the Bishop of Cotchester, which he was aware was totally lacking in sparkle. He had been wracked with increasing foreboding during the day, as one person after another — Charles Fairburn, James Vereker, Simon Harris, Daysee Butler and then, horrors, Cameron Cook and Tony Baddingham — said they’d see him this evening. Maud had obviously got tighter than he’d realized at the Corinium Christmas party. But he never expected the frantically billowing pink and white tent on the lawn or the tables laid for two hundred people, or the disco boys checking acoustics, or the three hundred bottles of Moet on ice in various baths round the house.

Roaring upstairs, he found Maud lying on the bed naked except for a face pack and an Optrex eyepad.

‘What the fuck is going on? Do you want to ruin me?’ He slammed the door behind him.

In the drawing-room below, a group of Patrick’s glamorous friends, who’d just arrived and were having a drink, could see the mistletoe hanging from the chandelier trembling beneath Declan’s demented pacing. Then they heard Maud screaming.

‘Oh dear,’ sighed Caitlin, ‘Daddy doesn’t seem in a party mood.’

Upstairs, Taggie was frantically making up beds for Patrick’s friends. Perfectly happy to sleep together in the narrowest of beds all term at Trinity Dublin, now they were sleeping in the house of one of their friend’s parents, all the girls, overcome by a fit of morality, said they wanted separate rooms.

The din was increasing in her parents’ room.

Maud was careful not to be too provocative. She didn’t want her eye blacked. Eye-shadow and mascara were more becoming.

‘Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled,’ sang Caitlin outside the door. ‘Shut up you two, you’re upsetting Gertrude.’

Taggie could hear another lot of Patrick’s friends arriving downstairs, crying: ‘Happy Birthday.’ Running to the banisters, she could see Patrick’s exquisite girlfriend, Lavinia, giving him a present. She was followed by a beautiful dark girl and behind her — Taggie caught her breath — just under the mistletoe in the hall, stood Ralphie. He seemed to have got even more beautiful with his big blue eyes and blond curls.

In a panic she rushed back into the spare room, put another log on the fire, and re-arranged the Christmas roses in the blue jug beside the bed. At least they had curtains in this room, and a really comfortable bed for Ralphie — and perhaps her. Taggie clutched herself; she must not be presumptuous. There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ croaked Taggie, hanging on to the mantelpiece for support.

The beautiful dark girl she’d seen in the hall came through the door. She was very slim and tiny, not more than five foot one.

‘Oh what a lovely room,’ she said, dumping a squashy bag and a black ruched dress on the bed, ‘and a fire too. You are kind. Will I be able to have a bath?’

‘Of course,’ stammered Taggie, ‘but it may not be a hot one.’

‘You must be Taggie,’ said the girl. ‘You look just like Patrick. Oh, look at the lovely Christmas roses! You shouldn’t have bothered.’

Taggie, blushing so hard she felt she could fry an egg on her face, said, ‘Actually this is Ralphie’s room.’

‘And mine,’ said the girl happily. ‘I’m Georgina Harrison, Ralphie’s girlfriend.’

Patrick had never seen such grief. Taggie seemed almost deranged, her whole body shuddering and shuddering with sobs.

‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, I love him so much.’ ‘Angel, I know you do. But really it’s not on. He’s frightfully shallow, and you’re simply not his type. It’s not anything you’ve done, you’re just too large for him. It’s like expecting a chihuahua to mate with a wolfhound. Well, not quite, but, being small, he feels daunted by tall girls. He said to me last summer, “Your sister’d be absolutely heartbreaking, if only she were tiny.”’

‘I can’t shrink.’

‘Go off and nibble a mushroom.’

‘Don’t make jokes,’ sobbed Taggie.

‘Sweetheart, you’ve got to pull yourself together and get dressed. Mum and Dad have stopped rowing, but there’s no way they can organize the grub. Mrs Makepiece has arrived with two frightful teenage children, and Grace and Reg the butler and his friends are all getting stuck into the Moet. You must go down and supervise them. Now be a good girl and dry your eyes. I’m not twenty-one every day.’

Maud had the ability to make houses look beautiful. There were no curtains on the windows, but huge fires crackled in all the downstairs rooms, which were lit by hundreds of red candles and decorated by huge banks of holly, yew and laurel. She was also totally unfazed by being a hostess, or by the frightful row she’d just had with Declan. She had certainly never looked more beautiful. The Medusa curls had dropped a little after her bath, and framed her pale face to which the heat from the fires had given a touch of colour. She was wearing a very low-cut ivy-green taffeta dress with a bustle, which brought out the witchy green of her eyes and clung to her figure. She’d lost seven pounds, hardly eating a thing over Christmas. Pearls gleamed at her wrists, her ears and her throat. If she couldn’t ensnare Rupert tonight, she never would.

‘New dress,’ snarled Declan, tying his black tie in the drawing-room mirror.

‘Oh, this old thing,’ said Maud mockingly.

‘The old thing’s in the dress,’ said Caitlin sourly.

Pinching some of her mother’s scent, she had seen the bill for the dress, and really thought her mother had overdone it this time. Why did she need to spend that much money on clothes when she’d already got a man? Caitlin was worried that her father was deliberately setting out to get drunk, and even more worried about poor old Taggie. But at least at a ball with hundreds of people, Taggie might meet someone new.