‘How could you?’ she whispered. ‘Have you told people those sort of things about me?’
‘Never, never,’ said Rupert. Suddenly dizzy, he slumped on the flowered chintz-covered chair in front of Helen’s old dressing table. ‘Beattie was a special case. The thing that turned her on was stories of my screwing other women. She must have had a tape recorder running under the bed the whole time.’
‘Then you did say those things. They’re disgusting, insupportable.’ She shuddered. ‘You realize your career’s finished? You’ll be kicked out of the party. I hope you’ve already resigned from Venturer. And I suppose Saturday’s instalment will be all about your touching designs on Taggie O’Hara. How the great rake was reformed and approached his waiting bride with a tenderness which was all the more careful, the more considerate because he knew the depths of her apprehension — Ker-rist!’ Her voice rose to a screech.
Rupert looked at her incredulously. Expecting the exocet from the front, he was suddenly being torpedoed from underneath.
‘You’re in love with her, aren’t you?’ said Cameron.
Rupert looked across the valley at his white fields. He’d always seen them as arms protecting Taggie. Now they seemed like a great predatory polar bear, crushing The Priory to death.
He turned back to Cameron.
‘OK,’ he said flatly, ‘I do love her. If I’m honest, I’ve loved her ever since New Year’s Eve, probably long before that. I’m desperately sorry, I know I’ve dealt you a marked card. I’m much too fond of you to kid you along any longer, just for the sake of the franchise, that you and I are going to end up together.’
Cameron opened her mouth to yell at him, but Rupert raised his hand for a second’s more silence.
‘I didn’t know a thing about these memoirs coming out — not that you’d want me anyway after reading them — but I want you to know that I was intending to level with you today about Taggie.’
For a second Cameron seemed to sway with frenzy, like a viper about to strike, then she screamed: ‘You won’t get her. Declan knows about it too, and there’s no way he’ll let you ever get your filthy depraved hands on his darling daughter.’
‘I know there isn’t,’ said Rupert. ‘This —’ he picked up the Scorpion and wearily dropped it in the wastepaper basket — ‘has finally done for us.’
‘Serve you fucking right,’ yelled Cameron. ‘I’m getting out of here, and I never want to see you again.’
She rushed downstairs out of the front door, then kicked and punched her way through the waiting journalists, sending several of them leaping for safety as the Lotus stormed down the drive.
‘Nice quiet girl,’ said the Mail on Sunday, picking himself out of the snow.
Arriving at Green Lawns, Rupert found Freddie and Declan desperately trying to salvage the IBA meeting. As a result of Rupert’s memoirs, two of the major financial backers had pulled out and Professor Graystock had resigned. As Rupert went into Freddie’s study, the Bishop rang up:
‘I’m afraid in the light of Rupert Campbell-Black’s quite appalling revelations, I shall have to withdraw my support for the Venturer bid.’
‘You can’t,’ said Freddie, aghast. ‘The meeting’s tomorrow morning. Your not being there will really tip the scales. I fort the Church of England were supposed to forgive sinners.’
‘I have to set a good example to my flock,’ said the Bishop and rang off.
‘Lily-livered bastard,’ said Freddie furiously. ‘We’re well shot of ’im.’
‘He’d have impressed the IBA,’ said Declan bleakly, who couldn’t look Rupert in the eye. Was it because of Taggie or the memoirs?
‘Then I must resign,’ said Rupert. ‘It’s the only honourable thing to do.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Freddie. ‘It don’t add up. Beattie Johnson was a slut, but she ’ad a good ’eart. I don’t fink she’d ’ave written those rings wivout considerable financial inducement. Seb Burrows has got nuffink to do at the moment. I’m going to put him on to the story and see what he can dig up. And can’t we slap an injunction on the Scorpioni?’
Rupert shook his head wearily. ‘I wish we could, but I’m afraid it’s all true. Although, it’s appallingly slanted. The only wrong thing is that Billy and I aren’t gay. Seven-eighths of it was never, never meant for publication, but she was such a fucking good listener, and you know I can never resist making people laugh. We were together for two years, for Christ’s sake.’
‘How’s Cameron taken it?’ asked Declan harshly. ‘She was in a terrible state last night. Thinks you and she are kaput.’
Rupert slumped on the sofa, putting his head in his hands.
‘We are. I’ve just told her.’
Declan lost his temper. It was like an earthquake and a volcano erupting at the same time.
‘Can’t you ever keep your fucking trap shut? First you tell everything to Beattie Johnson, then you have to give Cameron the boot. Don’t you realize this’ll screw up any final chance we have of getting the franchise? No Bishop, no professor, no financial backing, no Cameron — she’ll bolt straight back to Tony and tell him everything she hasn’t told him already.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Rupert looked up, the bloodshot eyes suddenly alert.
‘Haven’t you read The Times yet?’
‘Bas muttered something about it last night, but I forgot to read it.’
‘Cameron leaked all our plans to Tony on Tuesday.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘We put a private detective on to Tony. They spent an hour and a half together in the Royal Garden. ‘
‘So?’ said Rupert. ‘They were having a bunk-up. Cameron’s straight, I swear it.’
‘So do I,’ said Freddie.
‘Well, it’s purely academic now, since Rupert has seen fit to kick her out.’
‘I’m sorry, Declan.’
‘It’s not bloody good enough.’
Unshaven, putty-coloured, his shirt on its second day, his suit crumpled, Rupert looked so desolate and so ill, slumped on the sofa, that Freddie went over and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Could ’appen to anyone. You’ll come out of it.’
‘Venturer won’t. I’ve done for the lot of you.’
At that moment Valerie marched in.
‘I’ve read every word of your disgusting memoirs,’ she screeched. ‘I don’t want you in the house. You might give Wayne or even Fred-Fred some horrid disease.’
‘Shut up,’ snapped Freddie. ‘He’s ’ad enough punishment. Now just bugger off and bring us some black coffee.’
Feeling he was such an irritant to Declan, Rupert left soon after that. Holing up in Bas’s flat, he spent the rest of a nightmare day on the telephone, trying to resign from the party, from his constituency and from the International Olympics Committee. To his frustration no one would accept. The Leader of the Opposition, for example, was amazingly sanguine:
‘Wait until the franchises have been awarded,’ she said. ‘That tramp Beattie Johnson took me to the cleaners just before I became leader — slanted the whole interview. Jolly nearly cost me the job. The Amanda Hamilton business is unfortunate, I grant you, but Rollo’s only Shadow Foreign Secretary at the moment, and you haven’t done anything illegal. There’s been absolutely no security leak, and it isn’t as though you were married when you were in office. Just hang on a bit.’
Amanda Hamilton, on the other hand, was absolutely gibbering with anger when Rupert rang her. Rollo was intending to sue, she said.
Malise Gordon, by contrast, was icy cold with rage that Helen’s name had been dragged into it.