‘I’ll help,’ pleaded Taggie. ‘Please let me. I can drive round the area delivering handouts and telling people how good you are.’
‘How can she possibly explain to anyone why they should support Venturer,’ said Cameron too loudly to Rupert, ‘if she can’t read the fucking application?’
Seeing Taggie go crimson with mortification, Seb leapt to her defence. ‘Put it on tape,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it for you, Taggie. If I can’t go round the area canvassing, it’s the least I can do.’
Seb was as good as his word. Over the next two days he not only put the most important points of the application on tape for her, but also the answers she should give to any questions.
‘If they’re a Leftie organization,’ he explained, ‘say we’ve got Professor Graystock, Lord Smith and your Dad in the consortium. If they’re Tory, plug Freddie, Henry, Rupert and Marti Gluckstein. If they’re SDP, bandy Dame Enid’s name around.
‘If anyone starts grumbling about sex and violence,’ he went on, ‘say we’ve got the Bishop of Cotchester and he’s going to oversee all our programmes. On the other hand, if anyone says we haven’t got enough sex and violence, say we’ve got Rupert, Bas and Wesley Emerson in the consortium.’
He coached her over and over again until her spiel was word-perfect. Taggie found him incredibly kind and patient.
‘I wish I’d been taught by people like you at school,’ she said wistfully.
And so the hard grind started. But as Rupert was chronically busy, and Freddie was tied up with his electronics empire, and Declan was locked into his biography of Yeats, and both professors were frantically coaching their students for finals, in the end most of the work fell to Taggie. With a car full of stickers, badges and posters, she drove round the vast area visiting everyone from trade unionists to youth leaders, from mothers’ unions to arts councils, taking in every imaginable pressure group, begging them to sign her petition, to write to the IBA and best of all to come along and cheer Venturer at the public meeting in July. Because of her beauty, sweetness and passionate belief in her father’s and Venturer’s cause, she had surprising success.
Sometimes she was joined by the Bishop, sometimes by Dame Enid, which was great fun. Dame Enid had a convertible and they drove through the glorious Spring together with the roof down, getting brown, sucking lemon sherbets and calling an awful lot of people ‘boring little farts’ after they’d safely got them signed up. Driving round with Professor Graystock was less fun. He had a horrible habit of squeezing Taggie’s bare legs when he made a point, so she took to wearing trousers.
The third Saturday in May, however, was a very bad day for Taggie. She was tired because she’d been up very late doing a dinner party for Valerie Jones the night before. As she was scheduled to tour the Winchester area, which she didn’t know, she’d put directions to all the places she had to visit on tape, but even so she got terribly lost and flustered.
On one of her calls she’d got the SDP muddled up with the Labour Party and started plugging Dame Enid when she should have been pushing Lord Smith and Professor Graystock. Then she’d called on a vile headmaster who’d made her tremble because he reminded her of school. ‘How can Venturer help your school personally?’ she asked.
‘Well, get a pencil, write it down,’ he said bossily.
‘I’ll remember it,’ stammered Taggie.
‘Write it down,’ snapped the headmaster.
‘I can’t.’ Taggie hung her head. ‘I’m dyslexic.’
He was incredibly nice after that, giving her a glass of sherry. His eldest son who’d been killed in Northern Ireland had been dyslexic and he got out a lot of photographs to show her.
It was half past nine and getting dark when Taggie left and after ten before she managed to find her way to the gates of the local cricket club.
Perhaps they’d all gone home. But she could hear great whoops and catcalls coming from the pavilion, and, as she drew up outside, moths were bashing against the lighted windows.
Cricket — Taggie took a deep breath — that meant she had to plug Wesley Emerson’s involvement and Venturer’s entirely fresh approach to cricket coverage. Going through the door, she quailed. They were obviously having some all-male dinner. She couldn’t see the white table-cloth for glasses. Scores of huge-shouldered men with brick-red faces and beer guts seemed to be grinning at her with unfocused lechery. A tawny giant up at the top table, fiddling with the microphone, looked vaguely familiar.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she stammered, clutching her stickers, posters and her petition, ‘I’ll come back some other time.’
‘No, come in, sweetheart,’ they all yelled.
A chunky dark youth rose to his feet and swayed unsteadily towards her.
‘If you’re from the Shalvation Army, I’m beyond shaving,’ he said.
‘Come back, darling,’ roared the rest, as Taggie backed out through the door.
A slightly older man, who came up to Taggie’s shoulders, and who seemed less inebriated than the rest, said he was the club secretary and asked if he could help.
‘I just wanted to tell you about Venturer,’ mumbled Taggie, ‘and hoped you might sign our petition and put our stickers in your cars.’
‘I’d much rather put you in my car,’ said the chunky dark youth to roars of applause.
The club secretary then led her to the microphone and introduced her to the Captain, who had hard, rather unpleasant blue eyes. ‘Lady wants to tell us about television,’ he said.
‘Well, go on then,’ said the Captain nastily.
The tawny giant smiled at Taggie and sat down.
‘I just wanted to tell you about Venturer television,’ Taggie began in her soft growling teddy-bear voice. ‘You probably know we’re p-pitching for the Corinium franchise. We need your help in our campaign. We want to know how we can help you.’
‘Give us a blow job, Lofty,’ said a wag down the table to howls of laughter.
A bread roll sailed through the air, just missing her. Taggie blushed even deeper but ploughed on.
‘Strip, strip, strip, strip,’ intoned the Captain, banging on the table.
Soon the entire room took up the cry.
‘Shut up, you meatheads,’ yelled the tawny giant. ‘Let her finish.’
Amazingly, after that they did shut up and, except for the occasional Tarzan howl, heard her out in silence.
‘I want you to know finally,’ said Taggie, ‘that Venturer will be providing an entirely new approach to cricket coverage. We’re very interested in cricket at all levels, and er —’ she froze for a second trying to remember — ‘and Wesley Emerson —’ she brought out the name in triumph — ‘is a key member of our consortium and is specially interested in promoting cricket in schools, so you’ll have some really good colts coming on in the future. Please support Venturer. Thank you very much.’
‘I suppose we can now get on with the speeches,’ said the Captain over the thunder of applause.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Taggie picked up the petition. ‘Could you possibly sign this?’ she asked the tawny giant who’d been so kind to her.
‘Of course.’ He took the petition from her. ‘D’you want it signed to anyone?’
‘No, no, just your name and the name of the cricket club.’
‘That’s a bit difficult, Lofty,’ said the Captain bitchily. ‘We don’t play cricket, you see.’
‘But this is a cricket club,’ said Taggie, aghast.
‘Maybe it is, darling, but this is the Winchley Rugby Club dinner and Bill Beaumont here —’ he indicated the tawny giant — ‘is our guest of honour and is waiting to speak to us, if you’d be so kind as to bugger off.’
Grabbing the petition, leaving the posters and the car stickers, Taggie fled sobbing into the night. How could she have been so stupid? She was absolutely no help to Venturer at all.
Her dyslexia always got worse when she was upset. As a result she got desperately lost on the way home. She couldn’t read any of the unfamiliar names on the signposts, and once it got really dark she was frightened to stop the car and ask strangers the way. There were no stars, or moonlight or street lamps to guide her along the country lanes. She seemed to have been going round for hours and hours, until at last she saw a sign she could recognize:
Gertrude was noisily delighted to see her, but the trail of clothes in the hall and up the stairs told her that her
