by Jilly Cooper
‘He was all in white, weeth a hood over ’ees face,’ gibbered Giuseppe.
As Giuseppe’s breath rivalled Bacchus’s after an all-night bash, everyone assumed he was plastered. Having calmed him down, Lucy tucked him up in bed beside a snoring Granny.
But the following night, as she was wearily drawing her curtains, the windows suddenly rattled, the wind shrieked in the chimney and a ghostly hooded white figure came flitting along the parapets. She had never known such fear — not even a strangled croak would come out of her throat. James the lurcher was no help at all, and only growled if you tried to shove him off the bed.
More sightings followed. Everyone grew increasingly terrified — except Alpheus, who pooh-poohed any suggestion of spooks.
‘I’m sure these apparitions would disappear if you guys went to bed sober for a change,’ he added pompously.
The weather, although nearly May, was still freezing. After supper the following night Alpheus, mindful of colds, locked his bedroom windows and drew his curtains against draughts. He had just mounted his exercise bike, with the Don Carlos score on a nearby music stand so he could study tomorrow’s scene, when a chill breeze ruffled the pages. Spinning round Alpheus found the windows still firmly locked.
Suddenly the room felt clammily damp and cold as if he were in an underground cave. Next moment a window behind him had blown open and the heavy dark green velvet curtains were billowing into the room. Outside Alpheus could see the cliff of wood disintegrating, thrashing and writhing as if caught up in the frenzy of a mighty gale. But jumping off his bike and rushing to the other window, he found the moonlit valley all stillness and serenity. The wispy white clouds were only crawling past the shining stars. Not a silver leaf was moving. Far below, the lake lay as still as the blacked-out window of a limousine.
White and trembling, Alpheus rushed out into the corridor, stumbling along endless dark passages until he reached Rannaldini’s study. Rannaldini, just back from New York, was all suavity.
‘But, my dear Alpheus, these things happen. Poor monk was rumoured to have hanged himself from the beam een your room. But, then, legend weaves on legend like Mees Havisham’s cobwebs in these great houses. I never tell you because you insist on biggest bedroom.’
Rannaldini gave Alpheus a brandy but, despite heavy hints, did not invite him to move into the south wing.
‘But my wife, Cheryl, flies in tomorrow. She has a heart murmur. I cannot subject her to this.’
‘Why don’t you rent Jasmine Cottage?’ suggested Rannaldini. ‘Just beyond Paradise village, on the opposite side of the valley. Hermione recently ’ave it redecorated. I’m sure she would be ’appy to ’ave you there.’
If Liberty Productions picked up the tab, Alpheus felt he could go with this. A pretty cottage would be a more discreet venue to entice young women, and he had clocked the fact that Tabitha Lovell lived just up the road.
After bidding him goodnight, however, Rannaldini added silkily, ‘Eef you must creep down my corridors every night to pleasure Chloe, Alpheus, don’t wear that white hooded dressing-gown you stole from the Hilton, Milan. How can my crew and cast get their beauty sleep eef they theenk you are ghost of Charles V?’ and grinning evilly, he slammed the door in Alpheus’s frantically mouthing face.
In the morning, as he was leaving Valhalla to inspect Jasmine Cottage, Alpheus was somewhat spooked to meet Percy the Parson coming the other way with his Smirnoff bottle of holy water to exorcize a ghost — who was, in fact, himself.
‘I wish he’d exorcize Cheryl,’ grumbled Chloe, who was getting less and less discreet about her affaire with Alpheus.
‘What’s Cheryl like?’ asked Lucy, as she painted a dark brown semi-circle in Chloe’s eye socket.
‘Short-legged, noisy and goes for the jugular, like a tweed Jack Russell,’ said Chloe sourly. ‘She’s the personification of the word feisty.’
‘I hope you two don’t come to feistycuffs,’ giggled Lucy.
Cheryl, when she arrived, was enchanted by Jasmine Cottage, which had a modern kitchen, a power shower, a charming garden with a waterfall and a swing hanging from an ancient apple tree. On her first evening, a mischief-making Rannaldini invited her to supper and to see the rushes, which, of course, included Chloe and Alpheus’s spectacular naked bonk. This put Cheryl into orbit. Hermione, incensed that Chloe looked so good, vowed to steal Alpheus from her.
Later Alpheus, turned on by the rushes and feeling it might be expedient to pleasure his wife on her first night — after all, she had intimate knowledge of all his tax fiddles and could turn nasty — suggested they christen the big brass bed at Jasmine Cottage.
It was not a success.
Stoking away, Alpheus’s notion of himself as the great lover was shattered by Cheryl yapping shrilly, ‘You don’t need to go on all night, Alpheus. I’m not Chloe, you know.’
Nor were tempers improved by the driest spring on record. Rannaldini’s streams were all disappearing. Blossom whipped off by the bitter east wind fell down the ever-widening cracks in the paths. On the parched sunny slopes, saplings shrivelled and died in their cardboard tower blocks and poor bluebells faded and curled over without ever reaching their sapphire splendour. There was less and less grass. Lucy watched the lambs skipping after Rannaldini’s groom, Janice, as she brought them hay each morning.
Tristan was anxious to dismantle the set in the Great Hall and move outside, but he still hadn’t shot Hermione’s nude scene with Alpheus. On the morning it was scheduled, Hermione rang Tristan herself because Howie was in Tunisia.
‘I can’t hear you, Hermione.’
‘“The voice,”’ whispered Hermione sententiously, ‘she hasn’t woken yet. My body tells me I haven’t had enough sleep. I’ll do my love scene tomorrow afternoon.’
Spitting, Tristan ordered Wolfie to ring up Alpheus and get him in to do a couple of cover shots. But when Wolfie called Jasmine Cottage, an irate Cheryl told him that Alpheus had left for the set two hours ago. As a result, Cheryl was soon yapping up Rannaldini’s drive, and seeing Chloe coming out of the omnia vincit amor gates on her way to the post office, blacked her eye with her new crocodile handbag.
This caused huge consternation. Chloe had a starring role in the garden scene the day after tomorrow. The chorus, Flora and Mikhail, who’d nipped off to Prague for the weekend, were all due back for it. Tabitha had already booked some polo ponies.
‘You could change Chloe’s eyepatch to the uvver eye,’ suggested Sexton.
‘Non!’ cried Simone from Continuity in outrage.
‘Could you hide it with make-up, Lucy?’ asked Tristan.
‘Not for a few days. The eye’s much too bloodshot.’
Only when Tristan suggested she come out later for a consoling dinner did Chloe stop sobbing into his shoulder, and rush off to Make Up beseeching poor Lucy to streak her hair for this exciting date.
Cheryl, meanwhile, was roaring round Valhalla in search of Alpheus. She was soon joined by forty members of Dame Hermione’s fan club who’d won a Daily Express competition, entitling them to a day on the set of Don Carlos, and who’d just arrived by bus. Because Hype-along, the press officer, was frogmarching Baby through a series of interviews in London, Wolfie was deputed to show them round.
As they passed the mobile canteen, wafting forth an enticing smell of boeuf Provençal, one of the fans asked about the dear little house next door.
‘It was a hunting lodge for Act One, but in the end we never used it,’ explained Wolfie.
Throwing open the door, he thought for a moment two of his father’s prize pigs had pushed their way inside. Then, to his horror, he realized he had caught Alpheus and Hermione in flagrante.
Cheryl was about to black Hermione’s eye with her crocodile handbag, when Hermione rose to her feet, wrapping a white Hilton dressing-gown round her goddess-like form, crying, ‘Cheryl, my dear, calm down! Alpheus and I were only rehearsing for tomorrow afternoon. No-one should act a scene without rehearsing.�
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Such was the steamrolling force of Hermione’s personality, they were all silenced. The fans went off murmuring reverently that Dame Hermione was such a professional, particularly when she ordered ‘bubbly’ on the budget for them all at lunch.
Everyone except Chloe and Cheryl was in stitches over the whole affair. The crew wanted to know if Alpheus had a crown on his cock. What, however, a blushing Wolfie reported back to Tristan and Sexton was that Hermione had pubes bigger than Brahms’s beard.
‘I think she ought to trim it before she does a nude scene. Papa could have told her,’ Wolfie blushed even deeper, ‘but he’s away.’
‘How about Mr Brimscombe?’ grinned Sexton. ‘He’d love to do it wiv a Strimmer.’
‘Alpheus can tell her,’ said Tristan. ‘I’m busy. You brief him, Sexton.’
Sexton, however, pussyfooted so much around the subject that Alpheus went the whole hog and Hermione rolled up on the set the following afternoon with a totally shaved bush. This caused more rage and hysterics.
‘Perhaps it was fashionable in the sixteenth century,’ said Sexton hopefully.
‘We’re filming in modern times,’ snapped Tristan. ‘Get her some false pubes,’ he ordered Lucy.
‘It’s called a merkin,’ volunteered Granny.
‘Hardly a word that occurs in crosswords,’ giggled Meredith.
‘During the film of Carmen,’ said Griselda eagerly, ‘when Lilian Watson shaved her armpits by mistake, Make Up had to hold up shooting for two hours while they stuck on individual hairs.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ said Lucy aghast. ‘I’ve just spent even longer covering Dame Hermione with body makeup.’
‘Rather like varnishing the whale at the Natural History Museum,’ said Meredith sympathetically.
‘We’ll just have to shoot her from the back,’ said Tristan, who was torn between tears of despair and helpless laughter, particularly when Hermione summoned him and Wolfie to her caravan to ask if they thought her breasts were too large.
‘You could always get some smaller ones from Props,’ said Wolfie gravely, and both men had to flee clutching their sides.
The set was absolutely crowded out. Mr Brimscombe, binoculars hanging from his scrawny neck, was selling tickets at the door. Ross Benson, who’d been smuggled in by a returned Hype-along to do an in-depth piece, fell off a rafter, fortunately landing on the great four-poster. As he was very handsome, Dame Hermione looked very excited. Tristan, however, flipped.
‘Clear the set! Clear the fucking set!’
‘Please don’t bother,’ said Hermione graciously.
‘Where am I going to hide my microphone?’ grumbled Sylvestre, who usually had to drop it down Hermione’s cleavage.
‘Up her ass,’ volunteered Ogborne.
‘Quiet, please!’ roared Bernard.
‘Lucy,’ howled Tristan, then lowering his voice. ‘Can you do anything about the blue veins on her boobs?’
Lucy darted forward with concealer, murmuring, ‘Don’t you get nervous about taking your clothes off in front of all these people?’
‘Indeed not.’ Hermione looked amazed. ‘A woman should be proud of her body.’ Then, in indignation, ‘Why is that man reading Dogs Today? Very discourteous of him. Oh, it’s you, Meredith. I suppose you don’t really count.’
Bernard grabbed Tristan’s camera script to conceal a huge hard-on.
‘We’re turning over,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Action,’ shouted Tristan.
‘Christ, Alpheus isn’t having to act in this scene at all,’ hissed Sylvestre to Wolfie, a few moments later. ‘He’s bigger than a fucking Thermos.’
‘Hermione ees supposed to be gritting her teeth, Uncle Treestan,’ whispered Simone, ‘but she look as though she enjoy every minute.’
‘Cut,’ said Tristan, then to Hermione, ‘Your husband is virtually raping you in this scene, chérie. Could you possibly act a bit more upset?’
‘There are beings, Tristan’ — roguishly, Hermione quoted him back at himself — ‘who are born for others, who are quite unaware of their own egos. Elisabetta had far too perfect manners to upset her elderly partner by showing him she wasn’t having a good time.’
Tristan was defeated.
‘Okkay, okkay.’ He sighed.
They’d just have to film her even more from behind.
‘I’d take a wide shot on this one,’ he told Valentin.
‘One could hardly do anything else.’
Oscar, slumped over the camera ostensibly checking the lights through his eye-piece, was actually asleep.
‘Talk dirty to me, Alpheus,’ murmured Hermione, who was used to being turned on by Rannaldini’s crooning obscenities.
‘Unless Sexton pays me cash like you,’ murmured back Alpheus, ‘I may have difficulty meeting next year’s tax bill.’
Chloe was utterly mortified. Alpheus had been pompous and self-regarding.
‘But I thought he loved me and would shelter me through life like a great tree,’ she told Tristan, as she toyed with her scallops Mornay in the Heavenly Host that evening.
‘Plants growing in shade miss out on sun and rain,’ said Tristan.
Chloe’s breasts leaping out of that crimson dress had the same springy texture as the scallops, he decided.
‘You and Baby are stealing the show,’ he went on, filling up her glass. ‘You’ll get your revenge on Hermione when the reviews come out. You’re so beautiful, Chloe.’
Chloe glanced complacently at her reflection in a nearby mirror. Lucy’s streaking was so subtle. The dark glasses over her blackened eye showed off the tilt of her nose and the luscious curves of her smiling crimson mouth. She must buy Lucy a box of chocolates tomorrow.
Back at Valhalla, a weary Lucy finished writing the day’s notes and stuck in Polaroids of a naked Hermione and Alpheus. At least she hadn’t had to powder Alpheus’s cock. And Chloe’s lower lip was rather thin so she’d had to extend the natural line along the bottom with a lipbrush and fill in quite a large gap. But the end result had been heavenly, particularly in that incredibly skimpy dress. Tristan had reeked of Eau Sauvage and even put on a suit.
Out in the park, as the orange glow of sunset died away, the occasional bleat of a lamb and the deep-throated reassuring rumble of its mother reminded her of Cumbria and made her long for tumbling grey streams, geometric walls and mountains rising out of the mist. Why did one feel most homesick when one was miserable?
As Tristan walked Chloe back to the north wing, she cursed herself for wasting so much of dinner bitching and talking about herself. She wasn’t used to dining with a good listener. The lamp over the doorway shining through the clematis cast a leaf pattern on Tristan’s face. From the sides of his nose past his beautiful big mouth, two lines dug trenches that had not been there in January. Don Carlos was taking its toll.
‘Your suite or mine?’ she whispered.
There was a long pause. An owl hooted.
‘Darling Chloe.’
‘Are you gay?’
The leaf pattern quivered as he shook his head.
‘Is there someone else?’
‘Something else. Rannaldini’s back tomorrow. I have two, three hours’ work to do.’ Then, when Chloe looked sullen, ‘My father die last year. Your scene with Alpheus was so like his paintings. Give me time, Chloe.’ He kissed her cheek.
As he wandered off into the garden, rain dripped through the wood like some Chinese water torture. The constellation of the Virgin was chasing Leo the Lion across the sky. When push came to shove and grunt, he didn’t want to sleep with Chloe, who, as she undressed, felt it would have been quite easy to get over Alpheus if Tristan had made a pass at her.
26
Away from home for so long, people started to lose their moorings, groups formed and re-formed, cabals sprang up, feuds and jealousies flourished, as husbands, lovers, children were — sometimes gladly — forgotten. Poor Rozzy Pringle, working flat out in both Wardrobe and Make Up and send
ing most of her wages home, couldn’t forget Glyn, her horrible husband, however, because he was always ringing up to bombard her with complaints and demands.
‘When he’s ratty,’ sighed Rozzy, ‘I can never tell if he’s been dumped by one of his girlfriends or his business is in trouble again.’
‘No work and all play makes Glyn a kept boy,’ observed Meredith disapprovingly.
Everyone loved Rozzy, who seemed to love everyone, even the lascivious Mr Brimscombe, who spent hours discussing plants with her and even gave her access to his tool-shed. Lucy had filled a window-box outside her caravan with love-in-a-mist. Rozzy remembered to water it, and took James for walks when Lucy was too busy.
Rozzy loved everyone, but most of all she adored Tristan for his kindness when her voice gave out. She was always shoving buttered croissants and big cups of café au lait into his hands. Lucy had to curb tinges of irritation — after all, Rozzy fussed over her too. Wardrobe had its own Bendix to wash costumes. Rozzy put in Lucy’s clothes and occasionally dragged Tristan’s favourite peacock-blue shirt off him when he became too obsessed with work to change it. As Cheryl had become extremely bolshie, Alpheus crinkled his eyes in the hope of getting his washing done too, but drew a blank.
Mobbing up Bernard was a favourite location pastime, but Rozzy stuck up for him too. Bernard had insisted on his own little office, facing south between Wardrobe and the smoke-filled ant hill of the production office. Here, he could work out tomorrow’s movement order in peace and complete the Figaro crossword, which was faxed over to him every morning. On the door was a notice saying: ‘First Assistant Director. Please Knock.’