Rivals

dark glasses to look at you.’

Cameron laughed. He’d be terribly easy to fall in love with, she was shocked to find herself thinking.

‘How many more terms have you got?’ she asked as they wandered back.

‘Two.’

‘What are your future goals?’

‘To take you to bed when we get home.’

‘Don’t be an asshole! Apart from that?’

‘Get a first, then write plays.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that. I’ve started one already.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Intimidation — by British soldiers in Ulster.’

‘You’re crazy — neither the BBC nor ITV would touch it, particularly in an election year. Nor will the West End.’

‘Broadway would, and a success there would come here.’

‘Very self-confident, aren’t you?’

‘Not particularly. I just know what I want from life.’

He moved closer, putting his hands inside the three jerseys warming them on her small breasts.

‘I want you most.’

Back at The Priory, people were beginning to surface. Bas, having put so many Alka Seltzers in a glass of water they’d fizzed over the top, was trying to find his overcoat. Caitlin was eating Alpen and reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Taggie was serving breakfast to Simon Harris’s monsters, trying to give the baby its bottle and comfort Simon Harris who was sobbing at the kitchen table with his face in his hands.

‘Oh Patrick, thank goodness you’re back,’ she said. ‘Could you possibly ring the doctor about. .’ She nodded in Simon Harris’s direction.

‘No,’ said Patrick, backing out of the kitchen. ‘Sorry, darling, I’m busy.’

‘I’m going home to call the office and get some sleep,’ said Cameron.

‘No,’ said Patrick, suddenly frantic. ‘If we go to sleep it won’t be my birthday any more and we’ll break the spell.’

He took her up the winding stairs to his bedroom in the east turret, which was painted dazzlingly white, as though the snow had fallen inside. There were no carpets or curtains, and the only furniture was a desk, a chair, a green and white sofa piled high with books, and a vast red-curtained oriental four-poster with bells hanging from the tops of the posts. The view, however, was magnificent, straight across the valley and up to Penscombe. You could see the weathercock on top of the church spire glittering in the sunlight.

A volume of Keats lay open on the bed: the pages were covered with pencilled notes. Picking it up, Cameron crawled under the duvet and tried to decipher Patrick’s writing. Looking up, she saw the ceiling was painted dove grey with little stars picked out in white.

If only she’d had a room like this when she was young, she thought bitterly. Patrick went off to get them some breakfast. He took longer than anticipated. Taggie was on the telephone ringing up some doctor about Simon Harris, but she ran after him and buttonholed him as he was going back upstairs with a tray, dragging him into the sitting-room, distraught that he had Cameron in his room.

‘She’s Tony Baddingham’s c-c-concubine.’

‘Is that your word for the day?’ said Patrick coldly.

‘No, that’s what Daddy calls her. Do you want to ruin his career?’

‘Tony B couldn’t be that petty, firing a megastar like Pa, just because I took his mistress off him.’

‘He could! He’s really evil!’

‘Well if he’s that evil, Pa shouldn’t be working for him. Now, get out of my way, sweetheart. The coffee’s getting cold.’

‘And I’ve had enough of entertaining your friends,’ Taggie screamed after him.

‘Bicker, bicker,’ said Caitlin, looking up from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. ‘Pity it isn’t Spring, then Cameron could festoon your willy with forget-me-nots. Oh my God,’ she screamed, as an ashen Daysee Butler shuffled downstairs in a white towelling dressing-gown. ‘It’s The Priory ghost.’

Upstairs, Patrick found Cameron wearing his new red and silver dressing-gown and reading Keats. The sun shining through the stained glass of one of the windows had turned her face emerald, ruby and violet like a nymph of the rainbow. Patrick felt his heart fail.

He had brought up croissants, Taggie’s bramble jelly, a bunch of green grapes, a jug of Buck’s Fizz and some very strong black coffee. Cameron, who’d had no dinner the night before, was starving and ate most of it. It was astonishing, thought Patrick, that she looked desirable even with croissant crumbs on her lips. But even the black coffee couldn’t keep her awake for long. Patrick didn’t sleep. He sat making notes on Keats, which was one of his set books, but spending more time gazing at her. In sleep her face lost all its aggression.

It was almost dark when she woke up. For a second she looked bewildered and utterly terrified.

‘It’s all right,’ said Patrick gently. ‘You’re safe now.’

She got up and looked out of the window. Orion, the swaggering voyeur, was looking in at her. The great yews and cedars were black against the snow. She could hear an unearthly strangulated croaking.

‘What’s that?’

‘Foxes barking. It’s a love call. Come here.’

‘Not till I’ve cleaned my teeth.’

Grabbing her bag she went down the landing, terrified of bumping into Declan. Instead, coming out of the bathroom she found Caitlin and Maud having a row.

‘I’m nothing like Lady Chatterley,’ Maud was screaming. ‘Good evening, Cameron. Nothing at all.’

‘You’re so lucky to have a family,’ said Cameron as she slid back under the duvet beside Patrick. He was still wearing a jersey and trousers.

‘How many times have you been home, since you came over here?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t.’

‘Why not? One must see one’s family occasionally if only to fight with them.’

The argument outside was growing more clamorous.

‘My parents are divorced. My father’s married again. My mother lives with someone. I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Cameron shrilly. Suddenly she was trembling, her teeth chattering, her eyes darting and frightened.

‘You must,’ said Patrick. ‘How can I love you properly if I don’t know everything about you?’

‘No!’ It was almost a scream.

‘Come on. It’ll help, I promise.’

They argued for some minutes before she gave in.

Suddenly he reminded her again of Declan. He had the same gentle but relentlessly probing voice, the same way of never taking his eyes off her face, and almost hypnotizing her into telling him everything.

‘My mother walked out on my father when I was fourteen,’ said Cameron tonelessly. ‘Decided she wanted to be her own person. She dabbled in a lot of things, peace marches, consciousness raising, but she wasn’t sufficiently focused and when the money ran out she moved to a female commune. Took me with her, but left my dog behind, because it was male.’ Cameron gave a bitter, choked laugh, ‘I never forgave her for that. My father got married again, and got all tied up with his new wife. Then Mom shacked up with Mike.’

‘Your step-father?’

There was a long pause.

‘You could call it that. Mike was a dyke. My mother wrote a piece about coming out in the Village Voice. All her friends thought she was real brave. My classmates just sniggered and nudged each other.’

‘You poor little baby.’ Patrick took her trembling hands.

‘Then Mike and Mom moved to Cincinnati and Mike got the job of City Editor on the local paper. I could have put up with her being gay, but she was a real bull dyke, more macho than a guy really, with a skin like the surface