by Jilly Cooper
‘Bubbly for the bobby, bubbly for the bobby,’ chortled Hermione, as she weaved up the drive.
Gablecross sighed. He obviously wasn’t going to get home to Margaret for a while.
In a mad frenzy of superstition, Tristan locked himself away editing twenty-four hours a day. Only when Don Carlos was finished and an unqualified triumph would he feel worthy of seeking out Lucy. It was an agonizing task because every frame with people in it was a testament to her genius.
How could she have made his cast so beautiful yet so full of character? Hermione looked not a day over twenty-five, Flora disturbingly boyish, Baby so pale, wan and fond, Chloe so languorously seductive, Mikhail so noble, Granny so unrelentingly evil, Alpheus so tortured yet kingly.
‘She’s actually made that prat look like a gent,’ observed Rupert, who popped in most days and got frightfully excited over the special effects. Tristan’s filming of the grey, writhing traveller’s joy in winter suggested a wonderfully ghostly Charles V.
On each visit, Tristan begged Rupert for information about Lucy’s whereabouts. Every day he telephoned Gablecross but met the same stonewalling refusal. Too much money was invested in the trial to allow any slip-up.
Another reason Tristan worked through the night was the bad dreams that racked him if he tried to sleep, of Lucy drowning in a sea of blood, of the painting of Cleopatra and the asp in Buckingham Palace – except it was Lucy’s face not Cleopatra’s from which the colour was draining.
Having finished editing, Tristan had to bite his nails until he showed the final cut to the press on 11 January and went into even deeper despair that the whole thing was junk.
‘You’re too close to it,’ said Wolfie soothingly.
‘But will the man in the street like it?’
‘You couldn’t get more philistine than my future father-in-law,’ confessed Wolfie, ‘and he’s mad about it. Admittedly, he’s convinced he directed the entire film. I even heard him singing “Morte de Posa” in the bath the other morning.’
But Tristan wasn’t to be reassured. He was always cold, always miserable. He dreamt of crumpets, big log fires and Lucy winning the mothers’ race. The only glimmer of cheer was that The Lily in the Valley had been nominated many times over in the incredibly prestigious Academia Awards in Edinburgh, which boded well for the Oscars in February. It was widely rumoured that Claudine Lauzerte would be flying up to Scotland for the ceremony. If so, she must have been tipped off she’d won Best Actress. She wouldn’t put her head on the block otherwise.
January 11 and 12 were a hellish two days for Tristan: carrying the coffin at Aunt Hortense’s funeral on the Tuesday morning, flying to London for the première and press screening of Don Carlos, followed by interviews, which would probably go on all night, with a breakfast script conference for Hercule first thing Wednesday morning, then off to Edinburgh for the Academia Awards ceremony.
Tristan arrived at the première in Leicester Square in dark glasses so no-one could see his reddened eyes. He had been icily in control during Hortense’s funeral, and only given way to helpless weeping when he’d reached the sanctuary of his room at the Savoy. He had grown increasingly close to her in his frequent visits to Montvert in the last six months, as they had unlocked his past together. Hortense was also his last link with Lucy. He arrived at the première alone, which fuelled the gossip-mongers, who knew he was meeting Claudine tomorrow. Leicester Square, swarming with police keeping back the huge crowds and the paparazzi, was also horribly reminiscent of Valhalla. He longed to bolt into the cinema.
Alas, the red carpet had already been appropriated by Hermione, resplendent in extremely low-cut purple velvet, arm in arm with Sexton, posing for the huge pack of cameras and press photographers, determined even the Rutminster Echo should have the chance of a decent picture.
‘Hermione.’ ‘Hermione to me.’ ‘Big smile, Hermione.’ ‘Who’s your date, Hermione?’
‘Why, didn’t you know? It’s Sexton Kemp, our producer.’
‘Look this way, Sexton.’ ‘To me, Sexton.’ ‘Sexton.’
Sexton was in heaven. Tristan was going through the roof.
‘“Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my cock erect,”’ sang a voice in Tristan’s ear. ‘“And whistle a happy tune.” Can’t you give the old cow direction to move on?’
It was Baby, straight out of an Australian summer, his bronzed beauty enhanced by a dinner jacket with black satin facings, worn with a black silk shirt and a satin bow-tie.
The press were going nuts trying to identify him.
‘They won’t have to ask after tonight,’ said Tristan, as they finally fought their way in. ‘Everyone will know who you are.’
More than can be said for you, thought Baby. Tristan had lost so much weight he was almost unrecognizable.
Outside, the press was going into further frenzy, as a blond couple emerged from an orange Lamborghini.
‘Must be Chloe Catford,’ said the Mirror.
‘It’s Tabitha Campbell-Black,’ said the Sun. ‘Isn’t she fucking gorgeous?’
‘She’s Tabitha Lovell now,’ said the Mail, ‘about to be Rannaldini. She’s marrying Wolfie next month. He’s the hunk beside her, and here’s Rupert.’
A great cheer went up from the crowd.
‘Been saving any more lives, Rupe?’ ‘Put your arm round Taggie.’ ‘A bit happier.’ ‘To me, Rupe.’ ‘Can we have all four of you for a family group?’
‘That’s quite enough,’ snapped an extremely uptight Rupert, shoving them all inside.
After that people arrived in a great rush: Alpheus and Cheryl just on speaking terms, Chloe ravishing in Prussian blue taffeta, Flora and George flashing wedding rings and wall-to-wall smiles for the photographers, Mikhail and Lara in splendid form, until Mikhail caught sight of Alpheus, turned as green as a cooking apple and fled to the gents.
‘Russians don’t have the big-match temperament,’ said Alpheus dismissively.
‘Bollocks,’ murmured Baby, grabbing two glasses of champagne and handing one to Chloe. ‘Mikhail’s gone to whip off those priceless diamond cufflinks, which he’s just remembered he nicked from Alpheus during the recording. He’ll have pickpocketed another pair by the end of the screening. Doesn’t Tristan look appalling?’
‘Probably sick with nerves,’ said Chloe. ‘I know I am. The advance publicity’s been so overwhelming there’s bound to be a backlash. Oh, here’s Simone and Griselda who’s wearing a dinner jacket. Gosh, they look blissful, and so do Granny and Giuseppe, although Giuseppe’s just cannoned off that pillar.’
‘Pissed already,’ said Baby. ‘Who’s that stunning guy with Helen?’
‘Lysander’s father, David Hawkley,’ whispered Flora. ‘He’s a headmaster, a classical scholar and rather glam in a geriatric way.’
‘Perfect for Helen because he’s just got his K,’ boomed Griselda. ‘She loved being Lady Rannaldini, but Lady Hawkley sounds even more kosher. I must say, she looks great.’
‘Naturally, I’m in mourning for my late husband,’ Helen was telling the Times Diary. ‘The police are still refusing to let us bury him. Have you met Sir David Hawkley?’
Hermione’s great white breasts, meanwhile, were nearly popping out of her low-cut dress in indignation.
‘Helen’s only wearing black because she knows it suits her,’ she hissed to Sexton. ‘Purple is the colour of mourning. And have you seen how dreadful Tristan looks?’
Everyone was bemoaning the fact that Lucy had been spirited away by the police and would miss the fun yet again.
‘Regards, some colossal stars must have arrived!’ Little Simone was jumping to see over the crowds as a white-hot firework display of flashbulbs exploded up the other end of the room.
‘They certainly have.’ Griselda lifted her up to have a look. ‘It’s DS Gablecross and DC Needham.’
‘She looks stunning,’ raved Simone, ‘and the pretty woman with them must be Madame Gablecross.’
‘And there’s Abby
and Viking,’ giggled Flora. ‘They keep waking their baby up with a torch in the middle of the night to see if it’s OK. Must be rather like the Nuremberg trials. Oh, look at my George blushing because Alexei Nemerovsky’s remembered him from the gala two years ago. Nemerovsky’s Marcus Campbell-Black’s boyfriend,’ she added to Griselda and Simone. ‘And there’s Marcus.’ Belting across the room, Flora fell into her old friend’s arms.
‘Goodness, you look well,’ they cried in unison.
‘I’m so pleased we were asked and not Gerry Portland and the Chief Constable,’ muttered Karen. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Timothy Gablecross, Mrs Margaret Gablecross and Detective Constable Karen Needham,’ she happily told the photographer, who had produced a notebook. ‘Nice to see someone, rather than us, scribbling things down. Who’s it for?’
‘Tatler,’ said the photographer.
Karen glanced at the Gablecrosses and went off into peals of laughter. ‘Portland and the Chief really will fire us now.’
‘Any information on Rozzy Pringle’s trial, Sarge?’ asked the Sun.
‘Only that it’s coming up at the end of April,’ said Gablecross firmly.
It was such a jolly party, most people didn’t feel nervous until they spilled into the dimly lit cinema.
‘How’s Rozzy?’ Simone whispered to Karen.
‘Very, very mad now.’
Tristan, Rupert and Taggie, who’d taken refuge in a side room, slid into their seats at the last moment.
‘I’m so nervous for Uncle Tristan,’ muttered Simone, catching sight of his grey, frozen face as the lights dimmed.
But she needn’t have worried. From the moment the royal family appeared in the royal box, there was cheering and clapping, followed by screams of delighted recognition, at the shot of Granny, as Gordon Dillon, glowering across at them from the opposite box, then a shiver of excitement as Rannaldini swept in.
God, he was attractive, thought Flora, with a shudder, as he tossed aside his highwayman’s cloak, brought down his stick and the orchestra exploded.
Then there was the beautiful shot of the armies meeting on the skyline, merging into the hunt streaming down the valley, which in turn merged into the hard colours of heatwave and the violence of the polo, then back to Baby singing in Cathedral Copse.
‘Listen to the clapping,’ murmured an amazed Rupert to Taggie, as applause broke out again and again, at Valhalla in the snow and sunset, at Meredith’s red drawing room, at the wonderful horses, at Griselda’s inspired costumes, and at the end of every aria, but not for too long, in case something was missed.
And the music sounded glorious. ‘Who composed this stuff?’ demanded a bigwig from Disney at the end of ‘Morte de Posa’. ‘Can’t we sign him?’
Things were also pepped up by the sub-plot of the murders.
‘That was just after Tab’s leather was cut,’ whispered Griselda to Anne Robinson, as Tab and Baby collided in front of the goal. ‘And that was when Tristan was arrested,’ she added, as Baby, Chloe and Mikhail squabbled over pistols in the maze.
There was an added frisson as Rozzy made her solo appearance, which Tristan had refused to cut.
‘“Do not cry, my dearest friend, do not cry,”’ sang Hermione, as she stroked a sobbing Rozzy’s face.
‘Boo,’ hissed Baby from the back stalls. ‘I’d watch out, Hermsie, Rozzy’s probably got a flick-knife hidden in the folds of that skirt.’
There was a long, horrified silence, followed by howls of laughter. There was laughter, too, when Sharon chewed up Alpheus’s slippers.
Tristan had been apprehensive about the nude scenes. But they were so magically filmed and lit, so genuinely erotic, and so wonderfully woven into the fantasies of the characters, that everyone loved and clapped them.
Roars of applause and end-of-game whistling, however, greeted Hermione’s bonk with Alpheus, and at one moment eager fans started singing, ‘England, England,’ in time to her bobbing bottom.
‘One is more popular than the other singers,’ whispered a gratified Hermione to Sexton.
But the audience needed these brief moments of laughter to relieve the heartbreak of the story and the horrors of the auto da fe. All round the cinema people were hiding their faces as the executioners set fire to the piles of newspaper beneath the heretics.
Tab, who loathed classical music and had intended to neck in the back stalls with Wolfie, except when Sharon or the horses came on, had watched every second.
‘Daddy keeps crying,’ she murmured to Wolfie. ‘Normally he only cries in Lassie or The Incredible Journey.’
Wolfie was simply dying with pride, because despite the feuds, the tensions and even the murders, Tristan had produced the most beautiful and thrilling film he had ever seen.
The two hours seemed to flash by. Carlos and Elisabetta had bidden their poignant farewells. Then Carlos was led off by Charles V, leaving Elisabetta, looking very like Princess Diana, to face the paparazzi lining up with their long lenses like a firing squad, until she fell to the ground riddled with bullets. Then the paparazzi became the Inquisition in their black habits with Valhalla’s four massive triangular cypresses echoing them along the skyline, cutting briefly to Rannaldini on the rostrum, handsome head thrown back, eyes closed, bringing the music to a triumphant close.
There was total, total silence. But as the end titles rolled up, before the lights went on, the cinema exploded. Hugs were exchanged, hands clasped, cheeks kissed, everyone was embracing, jumping up and down, cheering their heads off, as though a war or lottery had been won.
It was no longer a question of whether Carlos was going to be a hit, but how much bigger it was going to be than anything in years.
‘I must go and congratulate Tristan,’ cried Tab, as everyone surged into the ballroom next door. ‘He looked like one of his own ghosts earlier. Oh, I wish Lucy was here.’
‘No-one is to ask questions about the murders. It’s all sub judice,’ Hype-along was frantically telling the press as they fell on the bar and the food.
Oscar, Valentin and Sylvestre were already getting plastered.
‘Well done, well done, mes amis,’ said Dupont, the Montignys’ lawyer, kissing each of them, most uncharacteristically, on both cheeks. ‘What a film! Étienne couldn’t not be proud of Tristan after that. I must get hold of a tape to show his brothers, but I’d like to tell Tristan personally how much I enjoyed it.’
Tristan’s brothers were livid, added Dupont, lowering his voice, because Aunt Hortense, in reverse ratio to Étienne, had left her entire spare quarter to stray dogs and Tristan.
‘In his present crazy mood,’ sighed Valentin, ‘some might say the two were indistinguishable. Where the hell ees he? Merde alors! Leetle Cosmo just march in with Pushy Galore. Perhaps he make her next Lady Rannaldini after all.’
The roar of the party and the Friendship Duet pouring out of the speakers made it difficult to make oneself heard.
‘Tristan’s portrayed the press as so irredeemably bloody,’ shouted the Independent. ‘We’ll have to be nice about his picture to redeem ourselves.’
Gordon Dillon, on the other hand, was tickled pink to be portrayed as himself. The Scorpion was going to do a big feature, he told Granny, immediately inviting him to lunch in the boardroom.
‘Only if Giuseppe can taste the food and drink first,’ said Granny drily.
‘No chance of your bringing that Lucy Latimer as well?’ asked Gordon Dillon foxily.
There was no doubt that Baby had stolen the show.
‘What are you doing next?’ asked the Guardian.
‘Fat Franco’s broken a rib falling out of someone else’s bed,’ drawled Baby, ‘so I’m taking Otello over from him at the Met.’
‘Wow, the tenor’s Everest,’ said Opera Now in admiration.
No, thought Baby wistfully, Isa Lovell was the tenor’s Everest.
‘Did you enjoy shagging Dame Hermione?’ asked A. A. Gill.
Alpheus was in ecstasy, with so many charmi
ng young women journalists to crinkle his eyes at. He had even hung his dinner jacket over the back of a chair to show off his manly figure. George and Wolfie propped up the bar, getting pissed together, keeping an eye on Flora and Tab in case any journalist asked awkward questions.
‘It was the proudest moment of my life’, sighed George, ‘seeing Tebaldo, sung by Flora Hungerford, coming up on the credits.’
‘Hello, Wolfgang. Hi, George,’ called Helen. ‘I don’t know if you’ve met Sir David Hawkley.’
‘Hello, Mummy.’ Tab, breaking away from her circle of press admirers, came rushing over. ‘It’s so cool. Lynda Lee-Potter’s coming down to Penscombe tomorrow to interview me and Sharon. Dog News are putting her on the cover, and Celia Haddon is going to make her Pet of the Week in the Telegraph.’ Then when Helen didn’t respond, Tab asked lamely, ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Enormously,’ enthused Helen, ‘Tristan is so clever, and the acting was wonderful. Even Hermione was better than usual. Meredith’s sets were surprisingly effective, so was Lucy’s make-up and Valhalla looked stunning. Wolfie’s also been a tower of strength,’ she continued warmly.
‘I thought your little yellow Lab stole the show,’ said David Hawkley, smiling at Tab.
‘When is your baby due, Dame Hermione?’ asked the Sunday Telegraph.
‘Early April,’ Hermione put on a soppy face, ‘an Aries bairn.’
‘Where are you having it?’
‘In the Hippopotamus House at London Zoo,’ Baby whispered to Flora, ‘David Attenborough’s on standby.’
‘Where are you staying in New York?’ Flora asked him.
‘With Rupert’s younger brother, Adrian, who owns an art gallery and sounds distinctly promising,’ confided Baby. ‘So tomorrow might be another good day.’
Looking down from the balcony, Hype-along was gratified to see all his stars still ringed, six deep, with frantically questioning press. But they were all waiting to talk to Tristan. Many of them had held their pages and were desperate to telephone their copy.
‘Where the hell is he?’ asked Hugh Canning. ‘It’s like Hamlet without the Prince.’