by Jilly Cooper
‘And, of course, as in many great houses, there is a legend that when the lake dries up the head of the family will die.’
‘It looked promisingly low on the way down,’ murmured Baby.
Everyone laughed nervously, glancing furtively into the shadowy corners — except Alpheus.
‘Did you really manage to negotiate a cash settlement?’ he was asking Hermione.
‘Do you believe in ghosts, Sir Roberto?’ quavered Pushy.
The lights seemed to dim.
‘I believe, my dear,’ the excited throb in Rannaldini’s voice was growing more insistent, ‘in a great departure lounge crowded with spirits desperate to get to the next world or to return to this one, to avenge themselves or to clear their name or find a lost love.’
‘Attractive, isn’t he?’ whispered Chloe.
‘Satanically,’ shivered Flora.
‘Been to bed with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘So have I. Brilliant, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘We also have the legend of the Paradise Lad, a beautiful novice,’ Rannaldini’s eyes gleamed, ‘flogged to death by the monks for falling in love with a village girl. Sometime we hear him sobbing. Listen.’ As Rannaldini held up a white hand, a moan came from the chimney and everyone jumped in terror. ‘But it is probably only the wind.’
The port and brandy were orbiting like formula-one cars. Suddenly the door creaked slowly open. People screamed and clutched each other, as no-one entered. Then Rannaldini’s white cat, Sarastro, padded in.
‘It’s the night shift come to sit on Colin’s head,’ whispered Tabitha.
Next moment even she had jumped out of her skin, as Sarastro arched his back and hissed, his tail thick as a snow-covered Christmas tree. But he had only seen James, who would have given chase, if Lucy hadn’t grabbed his new green collar.
Helen was not happy. Tristan was perfectly charming but she wished he didn’t always want his crew to enjoy the same privileges as himself, when it meant her having on her left Ogborne, the pig-like chief grip whose shaved head was gleaming in the candlelight and who had just poured himself a third glass of port.
‘Got everything you need?’ she asked acidly.
‘Well, Cindy Crawford would be nice,’ said Ogborne, adding kindly, ‘but it’s been a great meal.’
‘Where does the name Valhalla come from?’ asked Pushy.
Helen opened her mouth. At last a chance to show off, but she was pre-empted by Ogborne.
‘Wagner,’ he told Pushy. ‘Valhalla was the palace built for the gods by the giants Fasolt and Fafner. You must remember that wonderful moment at the end of Rhinegold, when the gods pass over the rainbow bridge and enter the castle at sunset.’
The entire table fell silent, gazing at him in amazement.
‘And who’s that very handsome gentleman over the fireplace?’ simpered Pushy Galore.
‘She’s so far up Rannaldini,’ hissed Chloe, ‘one can’t see her toenails any more.’
‘That is my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side,’ said Rannaldini, smiling warmly at Pushy. ‘A tremendous rake. That portrait has been known to wink at very pretty girls.’
‘Bollocks,’ hiccuped Meredith. ‘You bought Great-great-grandpop and all your other ancestors in the King’s Road in the late eighties.’
Tristan tried not to laugh, and because Rannaldini had thrown Meredith such a filthy look and he didn’t want his entire crew and cast quitting Valhalla in terror, he got up to go.
‘Bedtime, everyone. Thank you, Rannaldini and Helen, for a wonderful evening. It has put us in great mood for tomorrow.’
Not all of us, thought Flora sadly, then squeaked in ecstasy as her mobile rang.
‘I’m in a seven-foot by seven-foot four-poster in Doosledorf,’ said a broad Yorkshire accent, ‘and I need soomeone to fill it.’
‘Oh, George,’ sighed Flora, ‘I love you so much and thank you for my lovely regard ring.’
Wolfie flinched.
‘OK for some,’ said Tab bitterly, then, pleadingly to Lucy, ‘Come back to the cottage for a quick one.’
‘Can I come too?’ asked Ogborne, picking up the bottle of Kummel.
‘No, you can’t,’ said Tab rudely.
Lucy sighed inwardly. ‘It’d better be quick — I’ve got to be up at six.’
Having made a few telephone calls, Rannaldini locked his study door, pressed a button and the bookshelf slid back to reveal a wall of monitors.
‘Two-way mirror on the wall,’ murmured Rannaldini, ‘who is the fairest of them all?’
Sadly, Tab had gone home. He must get Clive to install that video-camera in Magpie Cottage. Flora had pushed off to her parents’ house, Hermione to River House. But there was poor bald Colin, without his toupee, pacing his little cell, and Tristan had fallen asleep on his chessboard, clutching his mobile. Oscar was also asleep, Valentin calling his new wife.
Ah, that was more interesting. Pushy Galore going down on Sylvestre, and Ogborne snorting with delight over a porn mag. Wolfie lay on his back, smoking. Rannaldini had so often seen the same bruised furious reproach in Wolfie’s mother’s eyes. Of all of his wives, she had been the first and the worst treated. She had been so young. He must win Wolfie over. In the next cell, Baby was gazing at a photograph of someone suspiciously like Isa Lovell.
Pouring himself a brandy, Rannaldini sat back to watch Chloe and Alpheus but, despite Chloe’s ravishing body and flickering expertise, it was so mainline, he soon nodded off.
Even when she had tumbled into bed, long after midnight, Lucy couldn’t sleep. The house, like an ancient arthritic, kept shifting its position, creaking and groaning to get comfortable. The wind howled, the central heating gurgled, James was restless, and in the next room Colin Milton was so nervous they might get to the Spanish ambassador tomorrow, he spent all night practising his lines.
Lucy tried not to think about Tristan. For once she was glad when her alarm clock went off at five thirty.
22
From six o’clock onwards a mighty army of lorries, caravans, a canteen, generators, double-decker dining-buses and a Portaloo euphemistically nicknamed the honeywagon rumbled eastwards into Rannaldini’s woods. Their destination was a beechwood known as Cathedral Copse, because its silver trunks soared to the sky like the pillars of a huge nave.
It was a bitterly cold day. In a clearing Oscar, the director of photography, his purple scarf and dark hair flapping, was eating a bacon sandwich, glancing from shivering stand-ins to light meters, and briefing the gaffer, the chief electrician, who in turn told his minions, the sparks, where to put the lights. Except in the place where the singers were going to act, the carpet of faded beech leaves was criss-crossed with camera tracks and cables and teeming with focus-pullers measuring distances, boom operators, and props men trying to look useful.
Over in Make Up, Lucy had grabbed a cup of coffee and a hot dog for James before starting on the long haul of making up Baby, who needed Alka-Seltzer, lots of blue eye-drops, concealer for his dark shadows and blusher for his blanched cheeks.
‘You’ve got such a beautiful face,’ chided Lucy. ‘You should cut out the booze and get a few early nights.’
‘Carlos is supposed to look pale and wan.’
‘Not in this scene. That comes after his dad’s nicked his girlfriend.’
‘How’s Mrs Lovell’s marriage?’
‘Fine.’ Lucy drew a white line inside Baby’s lower lashes to reduce the redness.
‘Yeah, yeah, Rannaldini’s won a peace prize. Is Isa catting around?’
‘You should know. You’re his friend.’
‘He’s not the greatest communicator, except with horses.’
‘Aren’t you nervous?’ asked Lucy, who was accustomed to calming terrified actors, particularly on the first day.
‘Not in the least. Don’t change the subject. You went back to Magpie Cottage — she must have said something. She was certainly on the pull
last night, flashing her sea-horse tattoo.’
‘She dressed up because she thought Isa was coming with her. I don’t want to discuss it. Now, what are we going to do about your green tongue? Here’s a pink cough pastille, if you can keep it down.’
Next she had to cope with a sobbing Flora, clutching a furiously yapping Trevor with one hand and tugging her red hair down over her ears with the other.
Whereas make-up artists usually adjust to their subject’s wishes, film hairdressers tend to impose their views on others. Flora had got stuck into the tattered remains of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin only to discover she’d been given a short back and sides.
‘George will sling me out. Oh, for God’s sake, stop it, Trevor!’ Flora’s voice rose to a scream as the little terrier lunged at a surprised James.
‘You can get away with it, you’ve got such a lovely face.’ Lucy tied a powder-blue overall round Flora’s neck. ‘And it’ll soon grow.’
‘Not for three months, it won’t,’ mocked Baby. ‘That gauleiter Simone from Continuity won’t allow it, and Lucy said I’ve got a beautiful face too. She says it to all the girls.’
‘Oh, go away and annoy Wardrobe,’ said Lucy, throwing a sponge at him.
‘I shall go and inhabit my caravan. Look, it’s on the call sheet — “Mr Spinosissimo’s caravan”. It’s eight inches longer than Hermione’s, I measured it — so yah, boo!’
Lucy then had to turn a quaking Flora into Hermione’s private detective, thickening her eyebrows, giving her sideboards and a small moustache, and creating brown stubble with a dry sponge.
‘I’m bored in my caravan. It’s lonely being a mega-star,’ said Baby, half an hour later. He was so turned on by Flora’s new butch look, he couldn’t stop pinching her bottom.
‘You’re wanted in Wardrobe, Mr Spinosissimo.’ Standing in the doorway, his shoulders broadened by a lumber jacket, was a stony-faced Wolfie. ‘Get your ass into gear, the director’s waiting.’
‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen. Heil Hitler.’ Baby goosestepped after Wolfgang. ‘Christ, it’s cold. If March is meant to go out like a lamb, this one’s New Zealand and deep-frozen.’
Over at Wardrobe, Tristan and Lady Griselda, in a floor-length fur-lined red coat and a fake-fur hat like a tsar, had decided that as Carlos had just flown into France incognito, it would be more appropriate for him to lurk at the meet in a covert coat.
‘Wouldn’t a flasher’s mac be more suitable?’ said Baby.
He was still violently opposed to his Prince Charles wig and enraged Tristan by asking the grinning crew whether he looked a prat or not. When they voted by a show of hands that he did, he tore it off and threw it into a bramble bush.
Tristan only gave in because he and Rannaldini, who’d just rolled up in his huge wolf coat, had been sucked into an even worse screaming match with Meredith, who didn’t appear quite so young and boyish out of doors. The point of contention was a hunting lodge, which looked as though it had been exclusively decorated by Colefax & Fowler.
‘We are not making fourth-rate production of Hansel and Gretel,’ snarled Rannaldini, whose idea it had actually been because he wanted a free summerhouse, but who hadn’t forgiven Meredith for last night’s bought ancestors.
‘Carlos and Lizzie have a love tryst in it,’ Meredith stamped his little snow boot, ‘so it must look nice.’
‘We should have seen a model first,’ said Tristan reasonably.
‘It look like cuckoo clock,’ hissed Rannaldini.
Meredith flounced off, muttering that his artistic input had been compromised. The cuckoo clock was banished and stood sulking near the car park for the rest of the shoot.
Because Hermione was still squawking in Make Up it was decided quickly to relight and shoot the first four lines of Baby’s aria, when he expresses rapture after catching his first glimpse of Elisabetta.
There was already a crimson blur of new bud on the beeches. Bluebell leaves and green flames of wild garlic were pushing through the leaf mould. But such signs of spring were speedily blotted out by the snow machine scattering white foam everywhere, even between the cracks in the dry ground.
‘Remember not to bang your chest. It sound like Beeg Ben,’ begged Sylvestre as he miked up Baby.
Next moment, everyone jumped out of their skins, as music poured fortissimo out of speakers hidden behind two venerable sycamores.
‘Doesn’t it sound gorgeous?’ cried Flora, rushing out of Make Up, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Rannaldini’s overture is simply sensational. You’d never know it wasn’t Verdi.’
‘You always admired him,’ said Wolfie coldly.
Flora flushed. Next moment she had tripped over a sign concealed by the snow saying ‘Beware of Snakes’.
‘Oh, God,’ she wailed. ‘Trevor and I are going to invest in some thigh boots before summer.’
Meanwhile, Hype-along Cassidy, the harassed press officer, who was expecting a reporter and photographer from the Independent, was sidling from one bewildered member of the French crew to another, imploring them to charge forward and ask for Dame Hermione’s autograph when she deigned eventually to come out of her caravan.
‘Bruce Willis’s press officer does the same thing,’ he lied.
Tristan was taking Baby through a quick rehearsal. Valentin, Oscar’s handsome son-in-law, perched on a little chair behind the camera, was following them, as Ogborne, a red knitted flower-pot covering his shaved head, pushed the camera along the silver rail tracks.
As the head of Props pressed a button, and the smoke-machine enveloped Baby in swirling grey mist, Lucy shot forward with her brushes to take the shine off his nose, and a hairdresser rearranged his curls.
‘More smoke,’ shouted Tristan.
‘That brown velvet collar needs straightening,’ yelled Griselda.
‘Quiet, please, we’re going for a take,’ brayed Bernard, the first assistant director.
An incredible tension gripped everyone — even the birds were silent, the breeze still.
‘Sound rolling,’ said Sylvestre.
‘Camera rolling,’ called Valentin.
‘Mark it,’ said Tristan, and the clapper-loader jumped in front of the camera, saying, ‘Slate one, take one,’ and snapped his clapper.
‘Action,’ shouted Tristan.
Out strolled Baby into the sunlight.
‘“Fontainebleau. Immense and solitary forest”,’ he sang exactly in time to his own exquisite voice. ‘“What rose-filled gardens, what Eden of loveliness could equal in Carlos’s eyes this wood through which his smiling Elisabetta passed?”’
‘And cut!’ shouted Tristan. ‘That was great.’ Then, loping over to Baby, ‘Could you make it a little more ecstatic? You are expecting hideous future wife and suddenly you discover you are to marry most stunning girl in world — you could even clutch yourself with joy.’
‘Anything’s better than clutching Dame Hermione.’
‘Tais-toi! You’re miked up! OK, we go again.’
The mournful clarinet began once more, the smoke-machine fired another swirl of mist. As Tristan called, ‘Action,’ glamorous Valentin, riding his camera like a jockey, reminded Baby of Isa.
‘Fontainebleau,’ he sang rapturously.
After three takes, each more miraculous than the one before, Tristan said, ‘Fantastic! Check the gate.’
Once the clapper-loader had shone his torch into the camera to check there were no hairs or dust to ruin the picture, Tristan shouted: ‘Cut and print.’ Everyone cheered, because the first shot was in the can.
The rest of the aria was going to be used as voiceover as Baby smuggled himself into France and the Spanish ambassador’s entourage. It was now time for Hermione. Having borrowed a tape-measure from Griselda and discovered Baby had the longer caravan, she was now screeching at Bernard Guérin, the first assistant director. ‘I answer only to Tristan de Montigny or Sir Roberto, and no-one, absolutely no-one, orders me to hurry up. And in future ensure that my cara
van is not parked next to the honeywagon.’
Bernard, who’d been unable to make last night’s party, acted as Tristan’s sergeant major. His job was to see everything ran smoothly on the floor. Any hold-up cost thousands.
Bernard also did the bellowing and bossing around, which enabled Tristan to drift about, inspiring, charming, manipulating, and still appearing as Mr Nice Guy, even when he pushed people to the limit. Bernard, who’d been in the army with Tristan’s brother Laurent and held him dying in his arms in Africa, hero-worshipped the Montigny family. He also got wildly jealous and sulked if anyone got too close to Tristan.
Sadly, one of the reasons Hermione was being so gratuitously rude to him was because he had a brick-red face, the rolling eyes and big teeth of a rocking-horse, an ebony moustache covering a huge upper lip and the bray of a choleric donkey.
‘When Frogs are ugly, there’s no competition,’ whispered Baby, as Bernard emerged from Hermione’s mauling, his red face darkened to maroon and enlivened by a delta of purple veins on his forehead.
With a sigh, Rannaldini vanished into Hermione’s caravan and came down the steps a minute or so later, ostentatiously tucking his shirt into his trousers. ‘Dame Hermione is now on her way,’ he called out smugly, so the crew could hear. ‘You must learn tact, Bernard.’
Nemesis, however, was hovering: almost on cue, Hermione’s young, hopelessly harassed but adorably pretty make-up artist wandered down the steps of the honeywagon next door. In her clinging orange cardigan above knitted red and white trousers, she looked every inch a star. To the rapture of the Independent photographer, she was then stampeded by crew members, crying ‘’Ermione, ’Ermione!’ and begging for her autograph.
Hype-along Cassidy, the Press Officer, whose brown velvet hat was knocked off in the rush, only just managed to beat them off as Hermione herself emerged in the red riding coat Tristan had vetoed last night.