by Jilly Cooper
‘Rannaldini is so crazy about her, he inveigle her into marrying that absolute shit, Isa Lovell. Now he plays games with her like Iago. She came out of his study crying this afternoon.’
Lucy fought despair. Thank God Rozzy had rolled up with a bottle to cheer Tristan up. Rozzy was relieved that she only had a hundred or so more seed pearls to sew on Hermione’s coronation dress.
Next morning Lucy was terrified to discover slug pellets in James’s water bowl. Perhaps someone had just missed the window-box or perhaps, she thought wryly, people were jealous because Tristan spent so much time in Make Up – but it was only because he was desperate to talk about Tab.
She had further evidence that afternoon, when Hermione, who she was making up for her great renunciation scene with Carlos, announced she’d heard a horrid rumour that Tristan was queer.
‘Of course he’s not,’ exploded Lucy.
‘Well, that’s what they’re implying. Silly, really,’ Hermione gave her horrible little laugh, ‘that with so many pretty women to choose from, Tristan’s spending his evenings with . . . and also that make-up girls usually stick to their own kind and drink with the sparks and the chippies.’
Then, seeing Lucy’s face, she added, ‘But I stuck up for you, Lucy. I said you had quite a warm personality and, anyway, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Oh, Belgian chocolates!’
Lucy was about to snap that they were a thank-you present from Tristan for cutting his hair when Hermione opened the box and found one white truffle left.
‘My favourite,’ she cried. ‘Although I’ve already got a handsome hubby, and a thousand a year wouldn’t go far these days.’
She was just about to eat it, when Lucy snatched away the box. ‘James loves white truffles,’ she insisted, and opening the amazed dog’s jaws, shoved it into his mouth.
Hermione was furious.
‘When you think of Flora and that wretched terrier, and Tab drooling over that Labrador,’ she said beadily, ‘it is extraordinary how women who cannot get it together with a man become dependent on a companion animal.’
James spat out the white truffle.
‘Bloody chippies,’ exploded Lucy.
Meredith’s carpenters, building a cathedral for the auto da fe and banging away all morning, had given her a blinding headache.
She was so cross she gave Hermione a parsnip yellow complexion, ageing grey shading, hideous violet eye shadow and a wonky lip-line. Hermione was so busy reading about her health in the Daily Mail that she didn’t notice.
Tristan did, however, and remonstrated sharply with Lucy.
‘Well, if she was about to give Carlos the push and she loved him to bits, she would look grotty,’ shouted back Lucy.
‘Ma petite.’ Tristan looked at her in amazement. ‘This is first time I see you angry. You are so sweet,’ and he ruffled her hair.
‘Patronizing bastard,’ muttered Lucy.
She was so fed up that she knocked back nearly a bottle of white at lunchtime, and stuck Colin Milton’s bald wig on back to front. Colin was so taken by the sight of himself with a youthful fringe of grey curls nestling on his eyebrows that he would happily have let it stay. Tristan, however, went ballistic, and yelled at Lucy to stop taking the piss.
The auto da fe, which means Act of Faith, is one of the most terrifying scenes in all opera. Heretics in dunces’ caps are paraded through the streets by their executioners and followed by sinister black-cowled monks who, with the courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, take up their seats round the funeral pyre.
A newly crowned Philip comes out of the cathedral and repeats his coronation oath to defend the faith. The scene ends with his dreadful words, ‘And now on with the festivities!’ The masses are then entertained not by fireworks but by the heretics being burnt at the stake.
Lasting twenty minutes in the opera, even Tristan’s pared-down version took eight gruelling days to shoot. The harrowing nature of the subject exacerbated Rannaldini’s sadism. Meredith and his chippies had only just completed their ravishing cathedral façade, looking on to the east courtyard, when Rannaldini swept in on the first day of shooting and pronounced it utterly suburban: ‘Just like a Weybridge hacienda. Are we going to have chiming doorbells, celebrating the burning of the heretics?’
Meredith promptly burst into tears. It took all Tristan’s tact to stop him resigning. Lucy had visions of being asked to streak Meredith’s hair for yet another dinner at the Heavenly Host. Fortunately Sexton rocked up and told Meredith he thought the cathedral was just beautiful.
‘And he ought to know,’ whispered Hermione reverently. ‘Sexton did go to Eton.’
Hermione was also delighted that, after weeks of work, Griselda and Rozzy had finally sewn the last seed pearl on her ivory satin dress. Her first appearance wearing it that afternoon caused gasps of wonder and genuine applause from the crew.
A second later Rannaldini had erupted on to the set, and everyone glanced at the sky in excitement. Then, to their horror, they realized that what they had imagined as the patter of rain was the scattering of thousands of pearls, as Rannaldini ripped off the dress, and stamped it into the dust with his suede boots. Hermione, in her petticoat, screamed and screamed. Oscar crossed himself. It was like seeing a Velazquez slashed in the Prado. Tristan grabbed Rannaldini in white-hot fury.
‘What the fuck are you doing? That was the most beautiful dress I ever see.’
‘Elisabetta must wear scarlet,’ yelled back Rannaldini.
‘At her husband’s coronation?’
‘To symbolize in Philip’s crazy mind she has been unfaithful.’
‘All those pearls, all those pearls,’ whispered Rozzy, who’d done nearly all the work.
A devastated, hysterically sobbing Griselda had to be carried off the set by a buckling Lucy and Simone. Everyone was outraged. They loved Griselda: indefatigable, gossipy old trout. They knew she was good. The crew would have walked out if Rannaldini hadn’t built massive penalty clauses into all their contracts. Instead they went slow, with Oscar waking up to relight every ten minutes.
All the crew were putting in impossibly long hours, but no-one more so than Wolfie. Once again, his greatest headache was stopping Pushy Galore appearing in everything. Having waved a flag as a member of the hoi-polloi and simpered as a lady-in-waiting, Pushy was determined to star as a heretic, and was utterly incensed when Tristan chucked her out.
‘You wait till Ay tell Sir Roberto.’
Fortunately Rannaldini had flown off to Vienna and was not expected back until the evening. Pushy was even crosser when Tristan chose Tab instead. She would look so touching, a dunce’s cap on her blonde head, her deadpan face smudged. Tab was terribly excited; Wolfie less so. Supervising the filling of petrol cans with water, he couldn’t bear the thought of her beautiful body being torched.
The drought was so terrible, it was as if Meredith had carpeted the surrounding fields brown. Wild flowers that had survived were a quarter of their usual height. Wolfie disappeared in a cloud of dust as he drove his Land Rover round the park. All the cast complained non-stop about not being able to breathe. Wolfie could have burnt the lot of them on the bonfire.
It was the last set-up before lunch as, surrounded by leather-clad paparazzi, with Tristan’s four black cypresses in the background overseeing things, Granny as Gordon Dillon took up his position on the battlements of the cathedral. While the heretics were tied to the stakes below, shredded piles of the Scorpion were thrown under their bare feet.
‘As people in the sixteenth century flocked to see heretics burn, today we devour the papers and gloat over reputations being destroyed,’ explained Tristan. ‘Think of the poor Duchess of York.’
‘Think of Chloe in a week or two,’ murmured Flora to Baby.
Out in the park, through the heat haze, they could see Chloe, ravishing in palest pink, having her photograph taken for the Scorpion. Hotfoot from a very promising Samson and Delilah audition, she had returned to Valhalla for an in-depth int
erview with Beattie Johnson, the Scorpion’s most dreaded columnist. Beattie had written to Chloe direct, claiming she was a long-term fan of Chloe and the opera.
‘I can handle the press,’ Chloe had told Hype-along haughtily when he expressed horror at the planned interview.
Having read Chloe’s cuttings and a page-long synopsis of Don Carlos in the limo driving down, Beattie Johnson was highly diverted to see the identical twin of her notorious boss, Gordon Dillon, on the battlements and was now shredding reputations, ‘off the record, of course’, with Chloe.
Lucy, who’d already had to make up Chloe as well as the cast, was having a day from hell. The gruesome concept of an auto da fe upset her dreadfully. Her passport had gone missing and she’d spent two hours looking for it. Her back, from so much bending, was killing her. She’d have gone straight to James Benson, if she hadn’t given more money to Rozzy who’d been in tears all morning. This was because, after a weekend at home, Rozzy had forgotten Flora’s newly repaired puppet fox and done a U-turn only to find her horrible husband Glyn and his glamorous housekeeper, Sylvia, opening a bottle to celebrate her departure.
I can’t go on shoring everyone up, thought Lucy in despair.
Having not had any breakfast, she was feeling faint and decided to grab a salad from the canteen, where she found Chloe and Beattie Johnson, two glamorous blondes, sharing a bottle of Muscadet.
‘Bernard, the first assistant, has a thumping great crush on Rozzy Pringle,’ Chloe was whispering.
‘Who’s she?’
‘Oh, Beattie,’ giggled Chloe, ‘you must have heard of Rozzy. She’s so refined she pees eau-de-Cologne.’
Both women shrieked with laughter. Lucy’s blood started to boil.
‘Here comes Tristan,’ hissed Beattie. ‘You must introduce me.’
She’s got the hard, set little face of a terrorist waiting to lob a bomb into all our lives, thought Lucy.
‘I’ve seen all your films,’ Beattie was now telling Tristan.
Lucy was on her way out when she heard Tristan, who’d taken an empty seat at the table, explaining the auto da fe to Beattie. ‘The Spaniards are experts at ritualistic torture,’ he was saying. ‘Look at the ballet of killing the bull. In the same way, auto da fe sets fire to humans in dunces’ caps to humiliate and express power of Church.’
‘I love Spanish men,’ said Chloe, who hadn’t been listening.
‘Me too,’ sighed Beattie.
‘Well, you’re both stupid bitches,’ said a furious voice.
Looking round, everyone was amazed to see a trembling, red-faced Lucy holding a tray, off which a glass of orange juice and a salad were sliding.
‘I hate Spaniards. Hate, hate, hate them,’ she went on hysterically. ‘When greyhounds are past their sell-by date in England, they’re sold to Spain where they’re raced into the ground.’
‘Oh, pur-lease.’ Chloe raised her eyes to heaven.
‘But the fucking Spaniards are too stingy to shoot them or put them down so they string them up in the woods with their toes just touching the ground and have bets on which is going to die first. It takes hours. The poor dogs scream in agony like the heretics. And you like fucking Spaniards?’
The appalled silence was broken by Lucy’s salad crashing to the ground, and orange juice spilling all over Chloe’s new pink dress. Flora, Baby and Granny leapt to their feet, but Tristan reached Lucy first.
‘It’s all right, sweet’eart, of course it’s terrible, whether it’s greyhounds or heretics.’
But Lucy had wriggled out of his arms and, shouting, ‘Why don’t you have a word with King Carlos? I bet he shot partridge with your father,’ she fled, sobbing, back to her caravan.
‘Dear, dear,’ drawled Chloe. ‘When make-up artists start having tantrums, the rot has set in.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ yelled Flora.
Tristan was about to go after Lucy when Bernard seized his arm and dragged him off to an urgent meeting in Sexton’s office. This Tristan did not enjoy. The budget, Sexton told him bleakly, had hit twenty-two million and was still climbing: Tristan must hurry up the crew. After a snide piece in the Stage, picked up by the nationals, the backers were getting antsy. Rannaldini must be persuaded to release more money when he returned tonight.
‘He won’t unless we allow him to do his sodding introductions.’ Tristan unwrapped another piece of chewing-gum. God, he needed a cigarette.
Sexton was just saying he couldn’t pay this week’s wages when Tab barged into the room. ‘What’s that bitch doing here?’
‘Get out,’ bellowed Bernard.
‘She was Daddy’s mistress between marriages,’ stormed Tab. ‘She nearly ruined him. She stopped him and Taggie adopting babies in England, she got Abby Rosen sacked, and she outed my brother Marcus. She’s the most evil woman in the world.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Beattie Johnson, who’s interviewing Chloe,’ said Tab. ‘In that big black bag are a hammer and nails to crucify her victims.’
‘That’s blasphemous,’ exploded Bernard.
‘But a shrewd assessment,’ agreed Sexton. ‘If Beattie stitches us up, the backers really will pull out.’
Tristan wrinkled his brow. ‘I think she’s a friend of Rannaldini. We’d better throw her out before he gets back.’
He found Beattie buttering up Pushy.
‘If you weren’t so lovely, people would take you more seriously as a singer.’
‘Sir Roberto’s always sayin’ that.’
‘He says you stand out from all the other extras.’
‘Ay’m not an extra, Ay’m a featured extra,’ said Pushy haughtily.
‘Off the record, how well do you know Alpheus Shaw? What a hunk.’
Tristan had heard enough. Beattie was incandescent with rage when he told her that a car, with her suitcases all packed in the boot, was waiting to take her back to London.
‘Do not say Liberty Productions does not evict with style,’ he added, as he opened the door for her.
Chloe was also insane with anger.
‘We hadn’t even begun the interview yet. Everything was off the record.’
‘Every inch of that evil frame is taped,’ said Tristan.
Spurred on by his meeting with Sexton, he returned to the set determined to dispatch the last gruesome seconds of the auto da fe in one stint. It was even hotter. Hermione was flushing up in her new red dress from Versace. Flora and Granny sweltered in their dark suits, but not nearly so much as Alpheus in his gold regalia, or Baby, Mikhail and the courtiers in their ermine-trimmed peers’ robes.
As Lucy, tearstained after her outburst at lunchtime, rushed round trying to cool people down with a chamois leather soaked in cologne, Baby could be heard grumbling that he’d be barbied without going near any stake.
‘If you confessed at the last moment, you could be strangled before you were burnt to death,’ volunteered a listless Flora, who hadn’t heard from George since her night with Baby.
To capture the intense drama, Tristan was using a crane to film from above, with Valentin and his camera on a tiny platform hanging twenty feet above the funeral pyre. It would be a wonderful shot, tracking over the excited crowd, the bigwigs of church and state in their gilded regalia and the poor, doomed victims. The head of Props waited with his finger on the button of the smoke-machine. The flames would be added later by special effects.
‘Take that “I survived Don Carlos” badge off at once, Baby,’ ordered Bernard. ‘Quiet, please, everyone.’
‘OK, let’s go for a quick rehearsal,’ shouted Tristan, from a first-floor window.
‘Shit,’ muttered Valentin, who from his platform could see an orange Lamborghini Diablo sneaking up the drive. ‘Rannaldini’s back.’
‘Ignore him,’ snapped Tristan.
In moved the paparazzi like a firing squad, their long lenses trained on the heretics. Swiftly the executioners chucked petrol cans of water on the shredded Scorpions, then flicking on
their lighters pretended to set fire to the damp newsprint.
‘Cue for smoke,’ yelled Tristan, and a white cloud engulfed the heretics. ‘Excellent, let it clear,’ he shouted, ‘and we’ll go for a take.’
Adjusting his director’s cap to a more military angle, Tristan felt a surge of power as he looked down at the huge crowd. He was a general commanding a mighty army. The landscape shimmered with heat-haze, a hot breeze ruffled the red-tipped barley into flickering flames. He was just shuddering at the thought of Tab’s body being burnt to death when he was roused by a dreadful screaming. And fantasy became reality as the shredded newspaper beneath her stake burst into flames, and flared up around her. For a moment, everyone was motionless with horror. Then, as the screaming grew more terrified, Tristan leapt straight down into the smoke, miraculously landing safely on the stony courtyard.
‘It’s all right, chérie.’
Diving for the rope tying her to the stake, aware of flame caressing his chest, his long fingers somehow managed to untie the knot without fumbling. A moment later he had dragged Tab to safety.
Beating out the flames snaking up her yellow heretic’s robe, feeling no pain except that of frantic worry, he dragged the peer’s robes off a horrified extra and rolled Tab in them. It was over in thirty seconds.
Next moment, Wolfie, who’d been watching from a second-floor window, hurtled into the courtyard, yelling, ‘Is she OK? Get the paramedics, for Christ’s sake.’
The front of Tab’s hair, her long blonde eyelashes and her eyebrows were singed, there was a terrible stench of burning, but she didn’t appear hurt, only dazed and terrified as she collapsed sobbing wildly into Tristan’s arms. As Tristan clutched her to his sweat-drenched shirt, examining her face for burns, kissing her frizzled hair, crooning in rapid French that she mustn’t be frightened, the extras, thinking it was part of the plot, led a round of applause. As he ran into the courtyard, and sized up the situation, Rannaldini’s face was shrivelled into a mask of evil.
‘Who left petrol in that can?’ he screamed. ‘Someone has tried to murder my daughter.’