by Jilly Cooper
‘He’s called Mikhail Pezcherov. Solti call me after hearing him do the role in Russian. He’s now singing Macbeth in some crappy production and making ends meet belting out songs in a nightclub.’
‘And which do we have to endure?’
‘If we leave soon, we’ll make the second act of Macbeth.’
Landing in Prague, they were driven over the cobbles of ill-lit back streets to a crumbling opera-house. Rannaldini, well known to scream at latecomers, had no compunction in sweeping his party into their seats in the middle of the banquet scene. A rumble of excitement went through the theatre and Lady Macbeth stopped singing altogether to gaze at the great Maestro.
Another wild-goose chase, sighed Serena, who’d made sure she was sitting next to Tristan. The sets and costumes might have come from an amateur operatic society’s production of Brigadoon. Neither conductor, soloists nor chorus could agree on tempi. Attempting to glide through a castle wall, Banquo’s ghost sent it flying.
But out of this shambles came a voice of such beauty, so deep, rich, soft, yet intensely masculine, that Rannaldini’s party turned to each other in rapture. Tristan was so excited he hardly felt Serena’s pinstriped leg rubbing against his.
Mikhail Pezcherov was also an excellent actor, with a square, expressive face and strong features, enhanced by a black moustache and beard, and a curly bull’s poll tumbling over soulful dark eyes. More important, if he were going to play the gallant Marquis of Posa, he was of heroic stature, with long, strong legs that would look marvellous in tights.
Afterwards, he welcomed Rannaldini and his party backstage.
‘My knees knock, my tongue thicken in mouth, I can only croak hello, I am so excited,’ he announced, thrusting mugs of very rough red wine into their hands.
He wished he could afford something more expensive but all his money was going home to support his darling wife, Lara, and his children. Showing the visitors their photographs, he wiped away copious tears, but all would be worthwhile, if they could live together one day in comfort.
‘How did you meet your wife?’ asked Helen.
‘I was best man at wedding. Lara was bridesmaid. I sing “Nessun’ Dorma” at reception. Zat was zat,’ sighed Mikhail.
‘Lady Rannaldini and I had our first romantic weekend in Prague,’ purred Rannaldini.
‘Zat is good,’ said Mikhail. ‘I trust guys who love their wives.’
‘I too.’ Rannaldini caressed Helen’s cheek.
Really, thought Helen, when he’s as charming as this, I can remember why I married him.
Back at Rannaldini’s suite, Mikhail got stuck into a better class of red, wolfed down his own incredibly tough steak, and polished off everyone else’s leftovers.
Rannaldini, who for once hadn’t made a single bitchy remark, produced the score of Don Carlos and thumped away on the piano. When Mikhail came to the end of Posa’s wonderfully beautiful dying aria, it seemed impossible that only five listeners could have made such a noise, cheering and shouting until people in the next rooms banged on the thin walls.
‘So thrilling to find him together.’ A tearful Helen squeezed Serena’s hand.
‘You’re going to give the part exactly the right ker-pow quotient, Mick,’ Sexton told Mikhail. ‘Tomorrow our people will call your people.’
‘You better call my vife, she handle money,’ said Mikhail. ‘If I really have zee part?’
‘You have it,’ said Rannaldini, who had been particularly captivated when Mikhail congratulated him on his piano-playing. Not since Hermione had he discovered such a thrilling talent. Now, where had he put his treasured jade fountain pen? In his excitement, he must have handed it absent-mindedly to the waiter after he’d signed for room service.
‘May I call my Lara?’ asked Mikhail, as his glass was refilled yet again.
‘Go into our bedroom,’ said Rannaldini.
‘Can I possibly borrow your mobile to check on Jessie?’ Serena asked Sexton. ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling I’ve left mine in the taxi.’
Helen had buttonholed Tristan. When she’d first moved to England from America, she told him, she had worked as an editor in publishing, which had involved a lot of research. Perhaps she could help out on Don Carlos.
Tristan listened politely. Close up, Helen’s huge, staring eyes, ribby body, spindly legs and flesh worn down to her admittedly perfect bone structure, reminded him unnervingly of paintings of chargers dying of starvation in the Crimean War.
Across the room, trying to make Tristan jealous, Serena was chatting up Rannaldini, who was terribly sexy, but definitely not husband potential.
‘We must have dinner one evening,’ he was murmuring. ‘Bussage can always find a window for special people. At least promise to sit next to me at the Gramophone Awards on Tuesday.’
Helen’s face had lit up while Tristan talked to her, but it went dead as she noticed the wolfish expression on Rannaldini’s. Meticulous by nature, Helen became obsessive under stress. Now she launched into a frenzy of tidying, lining up scores and magazines, plumping cushions, whipping glasses from people still drinking – anything to maintain her sense of controlling the environment.
‘Leave it. We are not at home,’ exploded Rannaldini, and then, remembering his role as cherishing husband, ‘Go to bed, my darling, you must be tired.’
Having told Mikhail he would fix him up with a shithot agent, Shepherd Denston’s, who would handle everything, and arrange for him to have coaching in Prague to prepare him for rehearsals starting in December, Rannaldini said he was off to bed.
‘Helen and I have happy memories to relive.’
He found Helen faffing round in her nightie. She always laid out her clothes for the morrow, and she was certain she’d packed her saxe-blue cashmere and the lapis-lazuli brooch that went so well with it.
‘You packed in a hurry,’ soothed Rannaldini.
‘I guess one of the maids has nicked it,’ said Helen shrilly. ‘I hate Prague! The beds are so hard, the food’s disgusting, you can’t turn down the heating so I’ll have hot flushes all night, and finally there’s no bath plug.’
‘I will plug your hole, my darling,’ said Rannaldini softly. ‘D’you remember last time we play game of naughty doctor, taking liberties with young girl patient, and how excited you became?’
Helen gasped as he pushed her back on the bed.
‘She has been very naughty.’ Rannaldini locked the door. ‘She deserves good spanking for not eating enough.’
‘The others’ll hear us. You can’t, Rannaldini!’
Parting Helen’s legs, Rannaldini laid his tongue on her clitoris. Not for nothing was he known as the James Galway of Cunnilingus!
Helen achieved orgasm, fantasizing about Tristan de Montigny. Rannaldini pushed himself over the edge thinking about Tabitha.
‘My darling child,’ he murmured, as he came.
‘Why can’t our marriage always be like this?’
‘From now on it will be,’ promised Rannaldini.
Next door Tristan and Mikhail, who was drinking from the bottle, were dissecting the character of Posa.
‘He changes in the opera.’ Tristan lit another Gauloise. ‘He starts out an idealist, then realizes he’s got to act politically to get things done. He has to put on a different face to hide the brutal facts.’
Like you’ll have to, thought Sexton, with a sudden surge of pity, if you’re going to work with Rannaldini.
‘Posa was like IRA freedom-fighter,’ announced Mikhail.
Anxious to make a note about parallels with the IRA, who were very hot in Hollywood at the moment, Sexton found his pocket computer had suddenly disappeared. He was distracted by Serena, who had unleashed her dark hair like a cavalry charge, and undone two buttons of her pinstripe jacket.
‘Can I have a word?’ she murmured.
Wildly excited, Sexton padded after her into the second bedroom.
‘Is Tristan OK?’ she whispered.
‘No, shittin’ hims
elf about the funeral on Monday, poor little sod.’
‘It’s going to be like a state funeral.’
‘In-a-state more likely, wiv all his dad’s ex-wives and mistresses fighting to sit in the front row, and all the paparazzi hangin’ abart.’
God, Serena was pretty. I’m going to score, thought Sexton joyfully.
He was about to unfasten the last button of her jacket and push the door behind them, when she hissed, ‘Get rid of Mikhail.’
‘W-w-what?’
‘At once! Tristan wants to take me to bed.’
Sexton took it on the double chin.
‘Don’t hurt him,’ he urged. ‘He’s on the blink.’
Mikhail was desperate to go on partying and Sexton had frightful difficulty shepherding him into a taxi.
‘Such a lovely straightforward guy,’ said Tristan, as he and Serena walked down the dimly lit landing.
Outside her room, she put a caressing hand on his chest.
‘Sorry about your father,’ she whispered, ‘but a good fuck’s truly the quickest way to cure the pain.’
Taking her key, dodging her puckered-up lips, Tristan dropped a kiss on her cheek. Having unlocked her door for her, however, he showed absolutely no desire to follow her inside. The trouble with new men, thought Serena furiously, was that they were so desperate not to harass women you never knew if they were gay or not.
The Gramophone Awards took place five days later over a splendid lunch at the Savoy. Record producers and agents in sharp suits gossiped guardedly as they awaited their illustrious artists in the foyer. Women press officers, their shiny highlighted hair and long golden legs belying the severity of their neat black suits, hooked musical big fish out from their pools of admirers and ferried them like children to the right table. The progress was maddeningly slow because it involved so much hugging and hailing on the way.
More hot and famous than anyone, but hidden behind dark glasses, Tristan reached the table of Shepherd Denston, international artists’ agents, virtually unnoticed. He was delighted, however, when his host, Howie Denston, a fawning little creep who ran the London office, informed him that Liberty Productions’ cast for Don Carlos had cleaned up in the awards.
Alpheus P. Shaw, who was playing Philip II – Howie consulted his pocket computer – was Artist of the Year. Glamorous Chloe Catford, the mezzo, who had posed naked on her winning record sleeve, was the People’s Favourite. Solo Vocal had gone to Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, the Opera Award to Hermione, while Early Opera had been awarded to Granville Hastings, who’d been cast as the Grand Inquisitor. Fat Franco’s Italian Love Songs had been voted Best-selling Record. Most prestigious of all, Rannaldini had won Record of the Year.
‘Odd that you all know in advance,’ said Tristan, accepting a glass of Sancerre.
‘Not at all.’ Howie Denston lowered his voice. ‘Singers have such monstrous egos you’d never get them to an award ceremony unless they knew they’d won.’
Nor was it a coincidence that all the cast of Don Carlos – except Fat Franco – were Shepherd Denston artists. This was because Rannaldini had recently wangled himself the chairmanship of the agency. He had therefore ensured that 20 per cent of the vast fees earned by the singers in the film would go back into Shepherd Denston’s pockets.
Howie Denston, known as Mr Margarine because he spread his oily charm so widely over his artists, had now abandoned Tristan and bolted back to the foyer to await Hermione and his new chairman, who were probably having a bonk upstairs and bound to be late. Tristan didn’t mind being left. He was always happy watching people.
Also at the Shepherd Denston table, besides the award winners, was the retiring chairman, who had an ulcer. Next to him sat Serena Westwood, out of pinstripe into clinging scarlet, acting cool towards Tristan, determined to show him what he had missed by not seducing her in Prague.
Rannaldini, who’d done the seating plan, had also sat Serena next to Giuseppe Cavalli, a hunky young bass, who’d be winning awards in a year or two. Giuseppe had been cast as the ghost of the Emperor, Charles V, who appears at the end of the opera and draws his grandson, Carlos, into the safety of the tomb.
No-one was likely to be safe with Giuseppe, who was an unghostly thug with shoulder-length black curls. Given to check shirts tucked into bulging jeans, he had a huge fan mail from women, but was in fact the lover of Granville Hastings, known as ‘Granny’, who could have uncheerfully murdered Rannaldini for continually fixing Giuseppe up with rich single women. Lone parents were even more predatory than loan sharks, reckoned Granny.
Elegant, tall, silver-haired, always exquisitely dressed, Granny appeared a cosy old pussy-cat. Inwardly his heart was breaking. For years he had sung Philip II, the finest bass role in the repertoire, but now, at nearly sixty-four, he had been demoted to the just as difficult but more pantomime villain role of the Grand Inquisitor. As the bigger part, Philip also got the bigger pay cheque, and keeping Giuseppe was very expensive.
Alpheus P. Shaw III, a very successful, self-regarding American bass sitting at the head of the table, was pointedly ignoring Granny because they had just sung Philip and the Inquisitor in the same production in Paris. Granny, supposed to be blind in the part, had totally upstaged Alpheus by bumping into furniture and at one moment, when Alpheus was hitting a ravishing top note, putting his finger into a candle flame and saying, ‘Ouch.’ Alpheus, who had no sense of humour, had been outraged.
A magnificent-looking man, with red-gold hair brushed back from a noble forehead, Alpheus looked as though he’d been carved out of Mount Rushmore. Married twenty years and the father of three fine sons, he was also a stern upholder of family values.
As he forked up a smoked-salmon parcel with his right hand, however, Alpheus’s left hand foraged between the plump, white thighs of Chloe the mezzo. He and Chloe had fallen in love two years ago when they both appeared in Aida. Engagements had separated them, so they had accepted parts in Don Carlos to be together in the long weeks of recording and filming. Alas, Alpheus’s wife, Cheryl, harboured suspicions, and was threatening to join him on location.
The great din of chatter suddenly stopped as Rannaldini stalked in with all the prowling chutzpah of a leopard who has no intention of changing a single spot.
No star in decline wins Record of the Year.
‘It’s God,’ murmured two record executives, as he swept past them.
He was followed by Hermione Harefield, looking slightly flushed. The lunchers giggled as they noticed the jacket of her purple Chanel suit had been wrongly buttoned up.
‘Gangway, gangway for Dame Hermione,’ yelled Howie Denston pummelling aside other late-comers and sycophants, as Hermione glided across the room as stately as the QE2.
‘I so wanted to creep in here anonymously,’ she was saying loudly.
Embracing Tristan, with whom she intended having an affaire on location, kissing Sexton with whom she did not, Hermione totally ignored that upstart Chloe the mezzo, whom she disliked intensely, and Serena, whom she’d not forgiven for sending the wrong flowers, and Granny, who had never treated her with due reverence. Instead she turned to Alpheus, who was going to sing her husband.
‘Your Majesty.’ Hermione curtsied skittishly.
‘Madama,’ replied a bowing Alpheus, equally skittishly as he held her chair for her.
Everyone was very sad Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, hadn’t made the lunch. She was singing Octavian in Budapest, but sent tons of love. Later, a delightedly squirming Howie would accept the Solo Vocal Award on her behalf.
‘Rozzy’s so lovely,’ sighed Chloe, as Alpheus removed his burrowing hand to cut up his chicken Cenerentola. ‘She’s got no ego problem, unlike some.’ She glared at Hermione.
‘I hope,’ Hermione glared back, ‘that Rozzy is not overstretching her voice. I never do more than forty concerts a year.’
‘Why have you never done a Three Sopranos, Dame Hermione?’ asked the retiring chairman
, with all the enthusiasm of one who knows he will never have to handle it.
‘There is only one soprano,’ said Alpheus.
Hermione bowed her head. ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’
Conversation kept being interrupted by waiters grinding black pepper and pouring wine and water.
‘Still or fizzy, Dame Hermione?’
‘Still, please.’
‘One would have known that you would choose only something that ran deep like yourself,’ observed Alpheus playfully.
‘Great big plonker,’ muttered Granny.
‘Amen to that,’ said Chloe.
Alpheus was hung like a donkey.
‘Oh, look,’ she nudged Tristan, ‘here’s your leading man.’
Causing howls of mirth by wearing a vast T-shirt saying, ‘I’ve beaten anorexia’, Franco Palmieri, who was playing Carlos, had reached the Megagram table next door. Appropriating four buckling chairs, he waved jauntily at Chloe then scowled at Alpheus, whom he detested even more than Granny did.
‘Fat Franco longs to be the Fourth Tenor,’ Chloe whispered to Tristan, ‘but very sensibly the others won’t let that conniving shit near them. Don’t worry,’ she added, as she picked the fruit out of her glazed apricot tart, ‘hatred always produces incredible sexual chemistry.’
‘I prefer happy team,’ protested Tristan.
‘With Rannaldini as team leader?’ asked Chloe incredulously. ‘They say his dagger follows close upon his smiles.’
‘He is very great friend,’ said Tristan coldly.
‘Good, perhaps you’ll have a benign influence on him.’
Tristan was heartbreaking, Chloe decided. Those bruised eyes seemed to read her soul. ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ she added. ‘The funeral must have been harrowing. Claudine Lauzerte looked stunning.’
‘She did.’
But even Claudine’s divine presence had not distracted a paparazzi frantic to find out, among other things, why Rannaldini (in even more built-up shoes so as not to be dwarfed by Tristan’s three tall brothers) had carried the coffin.