by Jilly Cooper
‘A little.’ Tristan smiled as he handed her a vast Bloody Mary.
She looked half starved. He couldn’t have her blubbing all over a restaurant. He’d been too uptight himself to eat the Chinese takeaway he’d brought home last night. Perhaps he could heat it up for Rozzy.
‘I’m sorry to be such a drip,’ she said, following him into the kitchen. ‘Yesterday I discovered Glyn had appropriated thirty thousand pounds I’d saved for my tax bill to subsidize some dodgy property deal.
‘He’s also employed an incredibly pretty temporary housekeeper called Sylvia at vast expense for the few days I was going to be away recording Carlos. This morning I took my mother-in-law Go-Cat in her breakfast bowl instead of muesli . . .’ Rozzy started to cry again.
‘You’re just overtired,’ said Tristan, putting an arm round her shoulders. ‘I found my washing in the dishwasher this morning, and my car keys in the fridge.’
He let her run on as he got out the takeaway. The waxy topping of orange fat looked disgusting.
‘I can’t go home tonight,’ Rozzy was whispering to herself. ‘Glyn’ll think I’m spying on him and Sylvia. Oh, Tristan, what are we going to live on if I can’t sing any more?’
For once when his mobile rang Tristan was relieved.
It was Baby in ecstasy, and having a large vodka, because Christy Foxe, who’d been such a trooper, had finally walked out.
‘He was fed up shunting Hermione around,’ explained Baby, ‘Rannaldini being so vile to Rozzy was the final straw. The brave little lad got up and sang “The Prisoners’ Chorus” from Fidelio. After he’d gone, he sent Rannaldini a message on his bleeper, saying, “Stuff job up your ass, rude letter to follow.”’
Tristan started to laugh.
‘After Christy walked out,’ went on Baby gleefully, ‘Alpheus, too vain to put on his glasses and too busy ogling Pushy Galore, failed to read Christy’s last pencil note on the score saying, “Please move back here, Herd of Elephant coming through”, so Dame Hermione ran slap into him. Hermione is now suing for a broken toe, Alpheus for a broken rib. I think you’d better find another PA, Tristan.’
Grinning and shaking his head, Tristan switched off his mobile.
‘We’re in luck. You can stay on at the Capital, and take over Christy’s job. You know Don Carlos backwards. And because you’re wonderful at sewing – that is most beautiful cushion I ever have – when we go on location, you can stop Griselda, the wardrobe mistress, having nervous breakdown. And to keep you on the cast list,’ Tristan chucked the takeaway cartons in the bin, ‘you can have the non-singing role of the Countess of Aremberg. All you’ll have to do is cry when the King sacks you, and you’re very good at that. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.’
Rozzy got to her feet unsteadily. As he caught her before she fell, Tristan felt her desperate boniness.
‘You are the kindest person I’ve ever met,’ she said, in a choked voice.
Sexton and Serena, however, shook their heads at such unilateral brokering of a deal, and Rannaldini went ballistic at such prodigality: a singer’s salary for a neurotic geriatric PA.
That night, in revenge for Alpheus ogling Pushy, Chloe invited Sylvestre, Tristan’s handsome blond sound engineer, back to the Capital and discovered he was as good at twiddling knobs in bed as out. Afterwards, as they shared a bottle of Dom Pérignon on Liberty Productions, Sylvestre sighed that Tristan was too kind for his own good.
‘We had location manager on Lily in the Valley so useless he couldn’t find his own cock. Tristan called him into his caravan to sack him, but he spent so much time listing his good points so as not to demoralize him that the guy came out three hours later convinced he’d been promoted.’
More seriously, they were now without a page who, in Tristan’s new present-day version, had become a bodyguard. Tebaldo is not a huge part, but a vital one, a larky little fellow, usually played by a charming gamin.
Pushy Galore came forward immediately, ringlets and ribbons flying. She knew the part, could she audition? Rannaldini, Sexton, and Alpheus were all keen.
‘Give the young woman a chance,’ urged Hermione, because she knew it would irritate Chloe, who longed secretly to be admired and promoted by Hermione.
Serena, however, wanted to kick in Pushy’s buck teeth, because she was always making eyes at Rannaldini, and Tristan thought her ghastly and far too refined to play a bodyguard.
The argument was at full throttle in the control room when Viking wandered in. Despite their earlier differences, he had played like an angel throughout the sessions, and he and Rannaldini had achieved a grudging, if transient, respect.
‘Here’s one soprano who isn’t working at the moment.’ He chucked a photograph on the table.
The girl wore an ivory silk shift. She had a shiny dark red bob, pale gold skin sprinkled with freckles like a tiger lily, and cool, watchful green eyes.
Viking put a tape in the machine. Her voice was of such piercing, distinctive sweetness that Tristan had to hear only a few bars.
‘Bravo, Viking, who is she?’
‘Flora Seymour – she’s Georgie Maguire’s daughter, so it’s in the genes. She played the viola in my old orchestra, but trained as a singer as well. She’s got the most angelic voice in the world.’
‘Give me her telephone number,’ said Tristan.
He met a lot of opposition. Serena, Hermione and Chloe all thought Flora was a tramp, probably because she’d had affaires with both Rannaldini and Viking, and because they’d all three had designs in the past on the filthy rich, if slightly shady, George Hungerford, with whom Flora was now living.
Rannaldini didn’t want any advice from Viking and he’d fallen out badly with Flora. But he doted on her voice, which had never been properly exploited. He was enough of a mischief-maker as well to see the potential for avenging himself on Flora’s lover, George Hungerford, who as managing director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra had foiled Rannaldini’s takeover bid and who, as a developer, was also threatening to slap a motorway through Valhalla.
Sexton, who was watching the mounting costs in horror, was in favour because Flora sounded cheap.
‘How d’you know her so well?’ asked Tristan.
‘I was once hopelessly in love with her,’ said Viking.
Answering his mobile, he wandered out of earshot to speak to his new wife. ‘Abby darling, I love you too. I’ve also been matchmaking,’ he lowered his voice. ‘I’ve posted Tristan de Montigny down to Rutminster Hall to see Flora.’
Flora sat naked on the white shagpile drying her hair. In the long gilt bedroom mirror she could see three moles on her inside thigh and soft red pubic hair, still damp from the bath. Her small freckled breast rose every time she lifted her arm, but her two spare tyres didn’t shift.
Schiller’s Don Carlos was now open between legs grown far too chunky to play a page-boy poncing about in white tights. She mustn’t get too engrossed in the story, or she’d forget her hair and the sleek bob would shoot upwards like an explosion in a mattress factory.
‘A hundred eyes are hired,’ she read.
Surrounded by George’s guards, who watched her every move, Flora identified with Carlos. Then she looked up at George’s photograph on her dressing-table: cropped-haired, square-jawed, dark brown turned-down eyes, mouth set like a steel trap in the Harvey Smith/John Prescott rough, tough North Country mould – himself against the world. Only Flora knew how sensitive and kind George was behind the façade, but he was terribly possessive.
Having screwed up his first marriage because he was a workaholic, George had taken the autumn off to cement his relationship with Flora, but had returned to work because mega property companies and orchestras don’t run themselves. Most of his time was spent in Germany. Flora wanted to travel with him, but she couldn’t bear to be parted from Trevor, her little black and tan terrier, who was now asleep with a red ball in his mouth on the vast oval bed, whose headboard hummed with every dial. When she was away Trevor
wouldn’t eat, and neither he nor she would survive quarantine, so she stayed behind and missed George dreadfully.
Flora was also lonely because her great friend Marcus Campbell-Black, having won the Appleton, was now blissful in Moscow with Alexei Nemerovsky, and her other friend, Abigail Rosen, was having a baby and blissfully happy married to Viking.
Abby, a maternity dress hiding a non-existent bulge, had recently driven down for the day and chided Flora for putting on weight.
‘You’ve never been an achiever, Flora. You never really concentrated on your singing career, and you’ve never stuck to a diet.’
‘Too right,’ Flora agreed gloomily. ‘I’m the one who should be wearing the maternity dress.’
‘George is an incredibly attractive man,’ went on Abby. ‘If you’re going to keep him you mustn’t let yourself go.’
Flora’s hair was dry now. Thick as the shagpile inside, snow was growing on the window-ledge. Tomorrow she and Trevor would build a snow-dog. As she reached for her glass of champagne, Trevor flew off the bed, rushing downstairs in a frenzy of excited barking. Outside, Flora could see the lights of Rannaldini’s helicopter bringing Tristan from London. Trevor had mistaken it for George’s.
The heat of the hair-dryer had removed any need for blusher. Ringing her eyes with brown liner, Flora wriggled into a pair of black jeans, covered the flesh that spilled over the waistband with one of George’s evening shirts, squirted on Coco Chanel and belted downstairs. The Frenchman who came through the front door with snowflakes in his hair was so handsome and so near Flora in age that she promptly had another glass of champagne on an empty stomach out of shyness.
Tristan, however, noticed a Schubert quintet, in which he had often played the cello part, on the music stand in the drawing room and they were off, chattering dix-neuf to the dozen. Tristan was only too happy to tell Flora all about Tab’s wedding because it gave him an excuse to talk about Tab.
‘She’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw,’ confessed Flora, ‘but crazy like a fox, and so volatile. It must be like being married to Mount Vesuvius. I gather Rupert pulled out of Don Carlos as a result.’
Tab’s wedding took them down one bottle, then they moved on to the recording. As Flora’s parents lived in Paradise Valley next to Rannaldini and Hermione, and she knew Chloe, Serena and Meredith too, the gossip on that took them most of the way down another. Tristan, who’d noticed all the burglar alarms and the grilles on the windows, thought Rutminster Hall was ghastly, but improved by George’s Rottweilers stretched out in front of the fire. By the time they’d finished the second bottle, he’d ceased to worry about all the guards.
‘Where are you filming?’ she asked, as they tottered in to dinner.
‘Valhalla.’
‘Then I can’t do it. George would never allow it,’ squeaked Flora in horror, then shut up because two of George’s guards were serving steak and kidney pie and pouring a matchless Margaux.
After they’d shut the door, Flora told Tristan how strapped George was for cash.
‘He owes the Germans about forty million in bridging loans. If it were me I’d never sleep again. If I’d taken the part I could have helped out with a few bills, but truly I’m too fat. I’ve got a treble chin, although most trebles don’t have chins like mine.’
Tristan laughed. He thought Flora utterly ravishing and said there would be masses of time for her to lose any weight before filming started at the end of March.
‘But I haven’t got page’s legs.’
‘As it’s in modern dress, Tebaldo’s become one of those handsome detectives Princess Diana and Princess Anne seemed to get so close to. So your perfectly OK legs will be hidden by trousers.’
‘But the main drawback,’ went on Flora, ‘God, I hope this room isn’t bugged, is working with Rannaldini. George is insanely jealous and has never forgiven Rannaldini for beating me up and trying to rape me last August. I promise you it’s true,’ she added, seeing Tristan’s look of horror. ‘Rannaldini wanted me to stay the night with him after singing in The Creation but I bolted back to George.’
Then, after a large glass of Armagnac, she said, ‘I’ll do it, if George says it’s OK and if I can bring Trevor. Perhaps he could wear lifts and audition for one of Philip II’s wolfhounds.’
Trevor wagged his stumpy tail approvingly.
As soon as Tristan left, Flora rang Germany. George was dreadfully torn. He felt sick at the thought of Flora working with Rannaldini again and neither did he want her anywhere near that impossibly glamorous Tristan de Montigny, exuding cross-Channel pheromones. But he couldn’t stand in her way.
‘You’d never forgive me or yourself if you turned down the break of a lifetime.’
‘You’re the break of my lifetime,’ sobbed Flora, who half wanted George to forbid her. ‘Nothing will ever be as wonderful as falling in love with you.’
The moment she rang off George regretted it. Flora would have other chances and he didn’t trust Rannaldini. But when he rang back the number was engaged, even though it was two o’clock in the morning. She was obviously speaking to Tristan, accepting the part. George only just stopped himself ringing all the other numbers in the house.
Three hours later, Flora was slumped at the kitchen table, finishing Don Carlos and a large tub of banana and yoghurt ice cream, when she saw more fireflies dancing in the window.
Having made a detour to the other side of Rutminster to drop some Roman coins into the excavations of a rival, to prevent him getting planning permission from English Heritage, George had landed his helicopter outside the kitchen.
As Flora, followed by a sleepy Trevor, ran across the snowy lawn into his arms, George said, ‘I’ve got a meeting at nine in Düsseldorf, I can only stay an hour.’
‘Let’s spend every second of it in bed,’ said Flora, dragging him upstairs.
In fact, George was angelic. A fine bass himself, he returned the following evening to help her learn the part.
Flora also received a call from Sexton.
‘We’re writing into your contract a clause to say you mustn’t fall pregnant before the end of filming. Can’t ’ave a private dick in the club.’
Before her first recording Flora spent the night with Abby and Viking, who had practically to drug and drag her screaming into his car to get her to Wallsend Town Hall, which had grown even colder, the icicles outside even longer. The red-nosed chorus, in their overcoats, looked like carol singers.
Flora was supposed to take over where Rozzy had not started: in the Forest of Fontainebleau with Hermione and Baby, but as a dreadful anticlimax, Hermione had just rung in for the second day running saying that the broken toe she’d sustained in her collision with Alpheus was much worse.
Tristan was so angry for Flora that he drove much too fast over icy roads back into London to the Lanesborough. Thundering on the door of Hermione’s suite he was admitted by her excited PA. Hearing shrieks of agony, he thought he had misjudged his leading lady, but barging into her bedroom, found her having her legs waxed. To Hermione’s fury, he immediately insisted she and one hairy leg return with him to Wallsend.
Flora, meanwhile, had been immensely comforted to find a good-luck card in her dressing room from Serena’s new PA, Rozzy Pringle. She was attempting to get her trembling lips round a few arpeggios, when Rozzy herself rushed in with a mug of hot Ribena.
‘Hello, my poor lamb, you mustn’t be frightened. You’ve got such a lovely voice. I’ve studied the role so if you need any help . . . I have to confess,’ Rozzy went on, as she hung Flora’s blue scarf on a hanger, ‘I was prepared to hate you because my husband, Glyn, is so in love with your mother, he’s got all her records.’
‘I’ll get him an advance copy of her next album,’ promised Flora. ‘We’re all huge fans of yours.’
‘Come and meet Granville Hastings,’ said Rozzy. ‘He’s such a darling.’
‘Why are there so many people here?’ muttered an aghast Flora.
‘Y
ou’ve turned up on the worst possible day,’ whispered back Rozzy indignantly. ‘By constantly ignoring poor Tristan’s schedule and pulling out people to sing as and when he felt like it, Rannaldini’s created the most appalling backlog. All the rest of the cast are here in case they have to do retakes. Poor Tristan!’
They found Granny regaling an audience with chitchat.
‘My dear child, welcome.’ He put down his knitting to give Flora a kiss.
‘Where the hell’s Rannaldini?’ Even the normally ebullient Baby was uptight over all the hanging around.
‘Having a poke, I expect,’ sighed Granny. ‘He always poked the prettiest chorus girls at the Garden, bending them over the red velvet balcony of the royal box between rehearsals. If anyone came by, he used to pretend he was showing them round the opera-house.’
Granny rose, still knitting, and went into a sequence of languid pelvic thrusts. ‘Down there ees the peet, where my orchestra play [thrust], and zat is rostrum where I perform miracle [thrust], and zat is proscenium arch [thrust].’
‘When you ’ave feenish, Granville,’ said a chilling voice.
The laughter died. Granny dropped several stitches.
‘Dame ’Ermione soldier in. At least ’ave the courtesy not to keep her waiting.’ Rannaldini glared round.
‘Anyone got a Fisherman’s Friend?’ came Hermione’s pathetic bleat.
Limping ostentatiously, she joined Baby and Flora on the platform.
‘Just like the Teddy Bears’ Picnic,’ hissed Flora, glaring at Hermione’s full-length mink.
‘I assure you, this will be no picnic,’ hissed back Baby.
Rannaldini just had to stand there. His cruel, cold, pale, malevolent face was enough to give a performance its special edge. He raised his stick. Viking’s dying horn call floated out of the bar.
Flora was so terrified she began loud and sharp. It didn’t take Rannaldini long to put the boot in. After the fifth take, when she’d finally got the notes right, he said, ‘That was better, Flora, but you are expected to act.’