by Jilly Cooper
Having played in the first rugger team of an English public school, Wolfie was used to being yelled at under pressure. But with Bernard shouting instructions into his earpiece all morning, it was as though the Battle of the Somme had broken out. Now Rannaldini was pitching in.
‘And you can pick up another thermal vest from the Mill while you’re there, Wolfgang,’ Hermione called after him. ‘I cannot afford to catch cold,’ she added, as Tristan’s eyes rose to heaven at the thought of more delay.
By the time they broke for lunch, only Baby’s four lines had been filmed, and everyone had such cold noses they looked like an advertisement for Comic Relief.
Aware she had a French crew, Maria the caterer, a pretty, pregnant Italian, was on her mettle and had produced baked red snapper with aromatic Chinese sauce, steak and kidney pie, sautéed garlic potatoes, a vegetable stir-fry for Lucy, followed by rhubarb crumble or treacle pudding.
Everyone piled up their plates and charged the dining bus, where Tristan, because of the cold and it being the first day, had ordered bottles of wine for every table.
‘How the hell are you going to put up with Hermione?’ asked Oscar, as he tied his napkin round his neck to protect his purple scarf.
‘Divas are not fully balanced human beings,’ said Tristan dropping three Disprins into a glass of Perrier. ‘If they were they wouldn’t be great.’
After lunch the rows escalated.
‘What is my motivation for this scene?’ Hermione asked Tristan for the thousandth time.
‘You are cold, exhausted and lost in a huge forest,’ said Tristan, through gritted teeth. ‘Suddenly Carlos steps out from behind that tree and offers you his protection.’
‘If I’ve just come off a plane, surely I’d offer her a slug of duty-free,’ said Baby helpfully.
‘Will you stop taking the pees?’ Tristan’s voice rose. ‘As I was saying, Hermione, you’re lost in a wood.’
‘“Just a little lamb who’s lost in a wood,”’ sang Hermione, fortissimo, then went into peals of laughter as everyone jumped out of their skins.
‘Don’t you wish that pistol was loaded?’ murmured Baby to Flora.
‘I feel like Agent Scully. At least we’ve got the same-coloured hair,’ whispered back Flora, who was very excited by her gun, which was a Heckler-Koch ‘toy’, as used by the SAS.
She was feeling spooked, however, because Rannaldini had nastily insisted she take off not just her regard ring but also her sapphire engagement ring.
‘It ees almost beeger than the evening star, and much too camp for a detective,’ he sneered. ‘Why not lend it to Baby?’
‘Look mean, Flora, chérie,’ shouted Tristan, ‘and when you see Carlos, shield Hermione and point your gun straight into camera.’
‘Stand by to shoot, please,’ bellowed Bernard.
Everyone moved out of shot.
‘Here we go, let’s turn over.’
And poor Flora was into a rat race. If she sang loud enough to have the right facial movements, the sound was too loud for her to hear the playback and she got out of synch. Alas, the promised voice coach had been sacked even before he’d started. Instead, to help her sing in time, and come in at the right moment, the video of Rannaldini conducting the score was now being relayed on a huge monitor behind the crew. This made her even more nervous.
She kept fluffing her lines, let alone remembering to look mean and shoot into the camera. Nor was she helped by planes going over, Griselda charging up to smooth her riding coat over the bulge of her gun, Lucy racing in to tone down her red nose with green face powder, Simone telling her to do up her top button, or Rannaldini continually shouting.
‘I don’t like hecklers, even if they do have cocks,’ she muttered dolefully. Then, just as she got things right, her mobile rang.
‘Oh, George,’ Flora burst into tears, ‘I’m a lousy actress, but I can’t talk now. I’ll ring you back. I’m sorry, everyone.’
Rannaldini went berserk. ‘Are you going to take this thing seriously?’ he yelled, grabbing her mobile. ‘Because eef not Gloria knows Tebaldo’s words and is only too ’appy to take over.’
‘Leave her alone,’ shouted Baby, who’d been crunching clove after clove of garlic in anticipation of his clinch with Dame Hermione.
There was a red glow on the horizon. The third lot of snow needed topping up, the day was running away. Blown like a dry leaf by everyone’s arguments, Flora leant against a tree, got lichen on her breeches and bollocked by Griselda.
‘Everyone hates me,’ she muttered miserably.
‘I don’t,’ said Sylvestre, who could hear her through the mike.
‘I don’t,’ said Rozzy Pringle, the former singer of Flora’s part, whose voice had broken down in the recording, and who’d just arrived to help in Wardrobe. Putting a little stone hot-water bottle into one of Flora’s blue frozen hands and a mug of hot Ribena into the other, she whispered, ‘You look chilled to the marrow, poor little duck.’
‘Oh, Rozzy, how lovely to see you.’
‘And you. Don’t cry, darling, your make-up will run.’
‘Ooh, that looks nice,’ called Hermione. ‘I’d like some hot Ribena too. Go and fetch me some, Wolfgang.’
Which made Wolfie hate Flora more than ever, particularly when he met Helen panting up the hill going the other way. ‘George Hungerford’s just called the house. He can’t get through. Can you tell Flora to switch on her mobile? He says it’s urgent.’
‘I’m not having any of those thoogs bullying you,’ were George’s first words, as Flora rang him on Bernard’s mobile.
‘Flora,’ snarled Wolfie, ‘are you going to hold us up all night?’
He wants to kill me, thought Flora. Even with a hundred people milling around, he terrified her.
The next day went much better. In the afternoon, they even filmed Carlos and Elisabetta’s first kiss. Baby’s attempts only to kiss Hermione between her jutting lower lip and her chin came to nothing: she sucked in his tongue like a Hoover.
‘Cut,’ shouted Tristan then took her aside. ‘As this is the first kiss of an innocent young virgin, chérie, I think it should be more tentative.’
‘That woman could suck Tasmania back to the mainland,’ Baby regaled an hysterical crew. ‘God knows how Rock Hudson did it for years.’
‘It’s called a Fontaineblow-job,’ giggled Flora, who’d regained her high spirits. ‘When the weather improves you’ve got to bonk her.’
‘That’ll be a piece of piss,’ drawled Baby. ‘When I was a little kid in Oz my parents were always sending me up chimneys. Hermione’s fanny holds no fears for me.’
The first weeks of filming were very traumatic for Tristan, and his good nature, particularly when large crowds, horses and hounds were introduced, was severely tested.
Extras, as Sexton was fond of saying, are more expensive than lawyers. Tristan planned to use much of the chorus’s already recorded singing as voiceover, and when he employed actual crowds, to keep down the budget by packing as many of their scenes as possible into the same day.
One of his problems was that Sexton had advertised for extras in the Rutminster Echo, and the same lot rolled up for every crowd scene, whether as poverty-stricken woodmen and their wives or glamorous French courtiers and ladies-in-waiting or suave dark-eyed diplomats from the Spanish delegation.
This was particularly apparent because Pushy Galore, one of the few trained singers used as an extra, pushed her way to the front in every crowd scene.
If any of the extras managed to have a word with Tristan, they could claim they had ‘taken direction’ and charge for extra pay. If they were filmed beside any of the stars, this could be categorized as a ‘cameo appearance’ and they received double pay.
One of Wolfie’s most important jobs, therefore, was to keep the extras away from the cast, which was particularly difficult the day Hype-along invited down a reporter from The Times and was bunging anyone he could see to ask for Dame Hermione’s autogr
aph.
This was after a most unfortunate piece had appeared in the Independent headlined ‘Dame Qui?’ saying none of the French crew had a clue who Hermione was. Poor Hype-along had had to rise at dawn and buy up every Independent on sale at the Paradise village shop before Hermione could send out for one.
It was even harder to keep the extras away from Tristan, who was so polite, whose head was so much in the clouds, and who was so horrified by the way Rannaldini was shattering everyone’s confidence that he’d speak to all and sundry just to reassure them they were doing brilliantly.
As well as bellowing through his loud-hailer to the extras to keep back, Wolfie had to tell them what expression – sad, shocked, deprived, happy – to use. Uninstructed extras always look like the village idiot. Every week, Sexton came down with money in a Gladstone bag, new readies for the extras, used readies for Hermione. Wolfie had to distribute these.
The extras made their first appearance at a stag hunt through snowy beechwoods. A very mettlesome stag had been hired, and Baby and Flora made jokes about fast bucks, particularly when the stag took off into the forest scattering rustics and was last seen chasing ghastly Percy the Parson, who’d got a thumping crush on Baby after hearing him sing at Tabitha’s wedding.
Griselda, the wardrobe mistress, massive in a mauve boiler-suit, was having even more of a nervous breakdown than usual. She had spent days amassing clothes for woodmen and foot-followers that were suitably bucolic. Rozzy Pringle, her new PA, had spent hours labelling them with each extra’s name and hanging them on clothes rails.
Alas, all the extras had lied about their neck size and ended up wearing collars so tight their eyes popped out, like an old Pekineses’ reunion.
Then Rannaldini started screaming that nobody looked dirty enough.
‘Thees ees not catwalk at Aquascutum fashion show.’
‘You OK’d those clothes yesterday,’ said Griselda, bursting into tears. ‘I hate extras,’ she sobbed. ‘Only ten per cent of the men wear underpants, and only five per cent of the women.’
‘Can you tell me which five, when you’ve got a second?’ asked Ogborne, his shaven head hidden in a blue wool flower-pot today, as he laid the tracks for the dolly on which the camera travelled down a different ride.
Lucy had loads more people to make up. The courtiers and huntsmen were fairly straightforward, but she had great difficulty with the chorus of poverty-stricken woodland folk, because none of them looked remotely undernourished.
She had even more of a problem keeping a straight face when Colin Milton, instead of removing his marmalade toupée to play the balding Spanish ambassador, insisted on hiding it under a bald skull-cap.
Flora – who as Hermione’s detective was meant to shadow her during the hunt – found singing while controlling a horse extremely difficult. Tab had grudgingly lent her The Engineer because she wanted her little grey horse to appear in the film. Unfortunately every time Wolfie, who was cantering around like a polo umpire, bellowed through his loud-hailer, The Engineer bolted. Yelling that she couldn’t afford to lose an Olympic horse, Tab finally insisted Flora switch to Wolfie’s old pony, Audrey. This triggered off a further screaming match with Simone, because it screwed up continuity, and with Wolfie, who didn’t want poor Audrey between Flora’s thighs.
Tab didn’t care. As mistress of the horse, her word was law. She had already tranked the delinquent Prince of Darkness, because Rannaldini wanted Hermione to ride him in the film.
‘Rather like a selling plate,’ grumbled Baby.
The Prince of Darkness was fine when he was galloping across country, but he lashed out at crowds, particularly at Pushy Galore, who had shoved her way to the front of the foot-followers. Pushy was livid and promptly reported the Prince and Tab to the union. This may have been due to jealousy.
Every time Tab appeared on the set, all one could see was technicians tripping over cables and camera tracks and cannoning into each other as they cricked their necks for a third and fourth glance. Even Oscar, the director of photography, woke up.
‘Talk about the return of Hale-Bopp,’ he sighed, as Tab and The Engineer flew past, blonde hair, grey mane and tail flying.
After Tab, the most eye-catching sight on the set was Hype-along Cassidy, the Press Officer, who had ginger sideboards and, even in winter, whisked about in flowered kipper ties and flared pastel suits. ‘Seventies is my trademark,’ he was always saying. ‘If you’re different you’re remembered.’
Hype-along knew more people than Griselda, but in twenty-five highly successful years he had never met a bunch whose vanity and caprice exceeded the cast of Don Carlos. Not only did they want coverage in the posh papers, but also double-page spreads in the tabloids praising their artistry but not mentioning their sex lives.
On the extras’ second day, Hype-along wheeled in the Sunday Express, whose photographer was having an adventurous time leaping out of the way of The Prince of Darkness and snapping the hunt as they streamed down a woodland ride.
‘So pleasant to have a break in Paradise,’ announced Hermione, slowing down to bow to the Express photographer as she and Colin Milton cantered decorously past. ‘It’s so peaceful here.’
Colin’s chestnut mare had furry legs like a feminist. It was lucky he was hanging on to her mane for grim death for next moment they were overtaken by a yelling peril.
‘Move it, you fuckers!’ shouted Tabitha. ‘You’re hunting, not pulling a coffin, and for God’s sake sit up, Grandma,’ she added to Hermione, ‘and shorten your reins.’
Hermione turned puce. ‘To think I sang at her wedding for nothing! I’m not surprised Isaac’s fed up with her already. I also think she’s been at the hip flask.’
Wolfie thought the same thing, and finding a half-empty bottle of vodka in the hollow of a large oak tree, emptied it on to the grass.
Tristan, meanwhile, knew exactly what space he wanted between horses and, in the politest possible way, made Hermione, Flora, Colin and the hunt return to their starting-point at the top of the ride again and again.
They were at last achieving a perfect take, galloping out of the wood with the sun shining and ivy glittering like chain-mail on the trees, when Tab came scorching across their bows, screaming, ‘Cut, cut, cut.’
Horses and riders slithered to a halt.
But before Tab could weigh into them in front of a flabbergasted crew, an outraged Tristan and an apoplectic Bernard, Wolfie had hurtled up, caught The Engineer’s reins and yanked him to a halt.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’
With his furious, flushed face, his gleaming blond hair, and his plunging horse, he looked just like St George. But his indigo eyes blazed like Rannaldini’s.
‘Hermione’s toes were pointing down like Darcey Bussell,’ yelled back Tab, ‘and Spanish ambassadors don’t cling on to their horses’ manes. And who let Hermione carry a hunting whip without a lash? It’s so naff. And if she wants to wear a red coat, why doesn’t she get a job at Butlin’s?’
‘You’ve just wrecked a perfectly good take!’
‘My reputation is at stake,’ countered Tab, who was getting thoroughly above herself. ‘If this goes on, I’ll have to take my name off the credits.’
‘After all your forty-eight-hour experience,’ said a scornful Wolfie, thinking how pale and unhealthy she looked in the spring sunshine. Then, seeing the first assistant director puffing up the hill, he added, ‘And you’ll bloody well apologize to Bernard.’
‘I will not, you bloody Alfred Hitler.’
‘Alfred?’ Wolfie raised an incredulous blond eyebrow.
Realizing she’d goofed, Tab had to recover herself. ‘Adolf’s much more evil elder brother,’ she said haughtily. ‘And don’t you dare take the piss out of me.’
‘Can we get on?’ said a chilling voice, which promptly sent the sun in.
It was Rannaldini.
‘You’re out of order, Wolfgang. Tabitha was quite right to halt the film. That whip’, he add
ed bitchily, ‘is wrong. Hermione had a lash yesterday and The Prince of Darkness should be wearing my saddlecloth. Very black mark for continuity, Simone.’
‘Not if he’s being ridden by a French princess,’ said Wolfie defiantly. ‘Your saddlecloth incorporates the colours of the German and Italian flags,’ and swinging his horse round, he cantered off to tell the hunt to go back up the hill again.
How truly kind of Wolfie to defy his terrifying father for my sake, thought tiny Simone tearfully.
To avoid more chaos, Tristan filmed the hounds on a separate day. The Cotchester Hunt, pulled out by Rupert, had been replaced by a splendidly sixteenth-century assortment of wolfhounds, greyhounds, salukis and lurchers. But being gaze hounds, who chased what they saw rather than what they smelled, they ignored the extra, drenched in aniseed, who’d replaced the stag, and tore instead after the camera moving on its dolly. Soon Ogborne, clutching his flower-pot hat, Valentin, in his new English brogues, and Oscar, who’d nodded off against a copper beech, could be seen belting off into the wood in terror.
James the lurcher, who’d been signed up as a hound, immediately rushed back to Lucy, where the other Valhalla dogs, Sharon, Trevor and Tabloid, Rannaldini’s Rottweiler, who’d all ploughed the audition, proceeded to rubbish him out of jealousy.
‘Cut down the tallest puppy,’ said Flora, who was in such hysterics, she fell off Audrey.
Despite the traumas, wonderful work was being done. Hermione’s long, one-noted ‘Yes’, when she agreed to marry Philip rather than Carlos, had everyone in tears. And at the end of two and a half weeks, the first, and probably most taxing, act was in the can, the buds could feel free to burst open in Cathedral Close, and the wild flowers to throw off their blanket of artificial snow.
Action would now move inside to the dungeons and to Alpheus’s bedroom scene. Alpheus, Granny, Chloe, Hermione, Mikhail and Baby would be needed, but no horses or Flora, so she and Tabitha could have a break.
But there was no respite for Lucy. Her make-up had been inspired, except when Tristan popped into her caravan and her hands started shaking. When he watched the rushes, he realized even more what a treasure he had found. Flora with her short back and sides looked disturbingly androgynous. With miraculous shading, Baby had lost all his puppy fat – he was also acting everyone off the screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off him.