Rivals by Jilly Cooper Read Free Book Online

renewal next year, he had made the decision on the way down to clean up Corinium’s act well in advance.
    Until that time therefore, until Corinium were officially re-selected, he was determined not only to trail some of the most glittering names in television and the arts in front of the IBA, but also to put on some really worthy regional programmes.
    It was to map out ideas for these programmes that he’d called the impromptu meeting. Unfortunately half the staff were away. The Head of News was in Munich on a freebie, the Head of Documentaries was in Rome getting a prize, the male Head of Light Entertainment and the comely female Head of Kids’ Programmes were both away with gastric flu, which caused a few raised eyebrows, as they had been seen looking perfectly healthy the day before.
    Tony took the chair, but was instantly summoned to take an urgent call from Los Angeles. The only people in the room who didn’t appear terrified or at least extremely wary of him were Charles Fairburn, Head of Religious Programmes, who’d got pissed at lunchtime, and Cameron Cook, now Head of Drama.
    The Head of Sport, Mike Meadows, a once-famous footballer with ginger sideboards, whose muscle-bound shoulders had grown too big for his shiny blue blazer, smoked one cigarette after another.
    Simon Harris, the Controller of Programmes, who was principled and intelligent and always saw both sides of every problem, and was therefore labelled indecisive, trembled on Tony’s right. He kept his hands under the table to hide a nerve rash he had scratched raw. His thin face twitched. In an attempt to gain some kind of authority he had recently grown a straggly beard. When he took off his coat – Tony always kept the central heating tropical – you could hear the rattle of the Valium bottle, and see the great damp patches under his arms.
    Beyond Simon was Tony’s PA, Cyril Peacock, DFC, Corinium’s ex-Sales Manager, once a stocky, jolly, assertive fellow, sensational at his job. The point of a PA, however, is that he should be utterly loyal. Some Chief Executives in television buy this loyalty with money, which is dangerous, because someone else can buy it with more money. Tony bought it with fear. After making Cyril his PA, and sometime publicity officer, Tony had encouraged him to invest his savings in a company that promptly went broke. Now the terror of the Luftwaffe was someone Tony hung his coat on – a poor old dodderer in his early sixties, with loss of job and pension hanging over his head like a sword of Damocles. Tony took great pleasure in making Cyril do his dirty work – he had four people for him to fire on Monday.
    On Tony’s left was Miss Madden, his secretary, also in her sixties, plain, and utterly dedicated, whose chilblains were itching because of the central heating, and who never let anyone into Tony’s office without an appointment except Cameron Cook, on whom she had a love—hate crush.
    Finally, down the table, opposite Cameron sat James Vereker, the impossibly good-looking, beautifully coiffeured Anchorman of the six o’clock regional news programme, ‘Cotswold Round-Up’.
    James should have been in the newsroom getting ready for the evening’s programme, but, hating to miss anything, he had muscled in on the meeting and was now using Tony’s absence to rewrite the links he would have to say later on air to fit his own speech patterns.
    Glancing across at Cameron, James wondered if she and Tony had rehearsed the whole meeting in bed earlier this week, turning each other on by seeing who could be the most gratuitously bloody to everyone else. He looked at Cameron’s dark-brown cashmere jersey, snugly fitting the lean body, the pale-brown suede skirt, the Charles Jourdan boots and the lascivious unmade-up face, and felt a wave of loathing. Today her short hair had been coaxed upwards in gelled spikes, like a hedgehog who’d rolled in chicken fat.
    James pointedly moved the arrangement of Spring flowers