before the Old Mill pub, then keep going till you come to a big barn, turn right, then left up a winding road. Winchley Women’s Institute is at the top on the right.’
Pulling out the tape, Rupert looked up at the windscreen, on which a large capital L and R were stuck on opposite sides.
‘You poor little duck,’ he said softly.
The chestnut candles were shedding their white petals along his drive, a couple of horses blinked in the gloom. As Taggie drew up in front of the house, he said again, ‘You poor little duck.’
Taggie hung her head. ‘I can’t map-read very well. It takes me so long and signposts are difficult too, because I don’t know the words. If I put it on tape it speeds everything up, and we’ve got so much ground to cover before July.’
Rupert couldn’t bear it. What was it about Taggie that so often brought a lump to his throat?
‘Angel, you can’t go round on your own. Particularly not at night.’
‘I don’t always. Dame Enid’s come with me, and the Bishop, and Professor Graystock once or twice.’
Rupert shuddered. ‘That’s worse than being alone.’
Enforced celibacy was not natural to Rupert. It was like asking a man who smoked sixty cigarettes a day only to smoke ten cigarettes one day a week. Denied Cameron, he was certainly not used to sleeping alone. Still very drunk, he only just stopped himself taking Taggie in his arms to comfort her, and Christ knows where that would have led to. Declan would take him apart and Cameron would bolt straight back to Tony.
Getting out of the car, however, a brilliant idea struck him. ‘I’ll be travelling all round the area canvassing over the next month. You can come with me and hand out Venturer posters and stickers, and paddle the Venturer canoe at the same time. We can even use the Tory loudspeaker to plug Venturer when no one from the Party’s listening.’
‘Is that allowed?’ said Taggie in awe.
‘Politics is a dirty business,’ said Rupert blandly. ‘The Socialists paid a lot of actors twenty-five pounds to dress up in shit order and pretend to be a dole queue for their election poster last time.’
33
Next morning Caitlin rang up The Priory, wild with excitement.
‘Gertrude’s in the
‘What’s she doing?’ asked Taggie.
‘Wearing a Venturer T-shirt and an expression of absolute outrage. She’s sitting on your knee. You look nice, much better than that old tart Sarah Stratton.’
‘Oh goodness,’ said Taggie. ‘What’s the piece about?’
‘The headline says:
‘Then it goes on:
‘Gosh,’ said Taggie in amazement. ‘Where did they get all that from? I hope Lady B isn’t cross. How are you anyway?’
‘All right. Fed up with revising. Can you send me some money? And tell bloody Mummy and Daddy to write.’
‘They’ve been really busy with the franchise and things,’ said Taggie.
‘Mummy’s never busy with anything,’ said Caitlin bitterly.
The long, hard grind of getting Venturer’s message across to the people who mattered continued throughout the long, hot summer. But things were much easier now for Taggie. Several other papers reproduced the poster and, as she toured the area, people began to know all about Venturer, recognize her, welcome her and even ask her to autograph the poster.
More important, she spent much of May and June driving around with Rupert on his campaign trail. Leaving him to canvass or to rally support for other South-West Tory MPs. Taggie nipped off to visit vicars, youth clubs and Chambers of Commerce.
Rather too often for Tony Baddingham or Central Office’s liking, the two campaigns merged. Rupert was not above urging people to support Venturer on the Tory loudspeaker, or sticking Venturer posters up on the van alongside those urging the public to vote Conservative. Everywhere he and Taggie went, they handed out Venturer publicity material and had great fun after dark, driving round plastering the gateposts of Corinium directors, and even the Corinium building itself, with ‘Support Venturer’ stickers.
To add to Tony’s apoplexy, Rupert conducted the entire campaign in a blue Venturer T-shirt and twice appeared similarly clad on ‘Cotswold Round-Up’, and, even worse, with huge ‘Support Venturer’ posters on the Tory party van behind him.
Tony was quoted as saying the Venturer T-shirts had been chosen entirely by Rupert to match his blue eyes, and that no doubt the boy shading his forehead on the front symbolized all those Gloucestershire husbands trying to see where Rupert had hidden their wives. Rupert cracked back that everyone knew who the Corinium Ram was supposed to symbolize.
And so the mudslinging went on, with the local press and radio stations uniformly backing Corinium, but the National and Trade press, having scrutinized the applications and the candidates, universally agreeing that Venturer had the more exciting programme plans. Dame Enid wrote a battle song, sung by Maud, called ‘Everything Venture’, which to Venturer’s relief didn’t get into the charts.
On 24th June Labour won the election by twenty seats, with the SDP holding the balance of power. Paul Stratton lost his seat. Rupert kept his. He had, in fact, fought a brilliant campaign. Taggie’s presence seemed to soothe him, so he was far less acerbic with bores and hecklers, and, as he was one of the only Tories returned with a much increased majority, Central Office had to stop grumbling about him using Tory funds and equipment to promote Venturer.
In an unprecedented move, Owen Davies, the new Labour Prime Minister, asked Rupert whether he would like to stay on as Minister for Sport if the post was made non-political. Rupert was deeply touched, but refused. He was fed up with swimming galas and ping-pong matches, and there was a big row brewing about players taking drugs at Wimbledon, which he was only too happy to hand on to his successor. He was also immediately offered a job by the International Olympics Committee, but refused that too for the moment, knowing it would mean more buzzing round the world.
He wanted a breathing space, to spend the rest of the summer at home concentrating on the yard, seeing something of his children and putting in a lot of spade work with Cameron, who was getting increasingly uptight. Falling more and more in love with Rupert, she found it almost impossible to pander to Tony’s sexual needs and cope with the demanding job of Programme Controller at Corinium. While Rupert was fighting the election, he’d been constantly hounded by the press, baying for franchise gossip and trying to catch him out in some new affair, so he and Cameron had had to be doubly careful.
‘All this secrecy’s just like adultery, darling,’ said Rupert on one of their few meetings. ‘Very good training for when you’re married.’
‘That is the most cynical remark I’ve ever heard,’ stormed Cameron.
‘Not at all. The secret of a happy marriage is not getting found out.’
‘How d’you know? You didn’t have a happy marriage.’ ‘That’s because I was always getting found out.’
As the election was over, and Tony was tied up all day in meetings in London, she and Rupert had arranged
