by Jilly Cooper
Being called at such short notice, Rozzy had had no time to wash her hair – which Lucy was able to hide under a very pretty, short, curly wig – or to remove a few hairs from her chin and upper lip.
‘Some Immac will take them off in a trice,’ said Lucy soothingly.
‘We haven’t got time,’ quavered Rozzy.
‘Course we have.’
‘Lucy,’ screamed Hermione.
‘Don’t leave your old bags unattended,’ quipped Meredith, as Lucy belted off to Hermione’s caravan.
‘I’ve nicked a toenail,’ moaned Hermione, ‘and it’s sticking into my big toe. Have you got a plaster?’
‘Only to put over your mouth,’ muttered Lucy.
‘Are you nearly ready, Luce?’ Wolfie appeared at the door. ‘My father’s about to boil over.’
As a result Lucy only had time to put a bit of slap on Rozzy and pray that the dark base would hide any hairs, before Sylvestre arrived to mike her up.
Alas, poor Rozzy, struck down by nerves, fled to the honeywagon, from which, because naughty Sylvestre had not switched off the mike, the whole crew could hear the sound of Mount Etna erupting.
‘Mrs Pringle’s got the runs,’ giggled Pushy Galore.
‘Pity she’s not playing for England,’ sighed Ogborne. ‘They’re fifty-two for four.’
Even Bernard was smiling. Everyone, however, managed to compose their faces as Rozzy arrived on the set, except Hermione who, with merry laughter, proceeded to explain the joke.
‘That’s enough, Hermione,’ snapped Bernard, seeing Rozzy going crimson. ‘Rozzy looks beautiful, and the hair is very nice.’
‘That style makes you look years younger,’ conceded Hermione, ‘but you’re a little too red in the face.’
‘Probably a hot flush,’ sighed Rozzy.
‘Oh, no, dear, you’re well past that.’
‘Let’s go for a quick rehearsal.’ Tristan came off his mobile to Aunt Hortense. ‘Rozzy, you look wonderful.’
‘He could make a warthog feel like Helen of Troy,’ grumbled Pushy.
I’m Elisabetta’s lady-in-waiting, I ought to be playing the Countess, she thought furiously as, with the rest of the ladies of the chorus, she bobbed around in front of a hedge of white roses trying to get into shot.
‘“Countess,”’ sang Alpheus sternly, ‘“at daybreak you will return to France.”’
‘Burst into tears, Rozzy,’ shouted Tristan.
Rozzy’s only problem would have been holding them back any longer. Particularly when Hermione repeatedly stroked her face as she mimed her consoling aria and, between takes, loudly advised Rozzy to invest in some decent electrolysis.
‘It’s well worth it at your age.’
Tears of such humiliation had gushed out of Rozzy’s eyes that Tristan was genuinely able to congratulate her on a wonderfully convincing performance, which didn’t cheer Rozzy up one bit.
Happily, Hermione’s comeuppance was in train. Oscar, who was not the most famous director of photography in the world for nothing, had decided to avenge both Chloe and Rozzy.
That evening, as everyone poured into the viewing room to watch the rushes, all that could be heard was Hermione’s agitated squawking. Having lit her from beneath in her nude scene with Alpheus, Oscar had made her bottom look enormous.
‘The great globe itself,’ said Granny, in a sepulchral whisper.
‘You should have reduced it with a darker base, Lucy,’ giggled Meredith.
‘Any moment, David Attenborough will pop up and lecture us sotto voce on the mating habits of the hippopotamus,’ cried Baby, in ecstasy.
Shouts of ‘My bottom is not that big, my bottom is not that big,’ were drowned by cheers, particularly from Chloe, who gave Oscar a big kiss.
‘What are you doing after this?’ she murmured. ‘I owe you.’
Tristan laughed, but was cross with Oscar because they ought to reshoot. He was overruled by Sexton and Rannaldini, who both liked big bums and small budgets.
‘Do you know the meaning of the word “callipygean”?’ asked Sexton cosily, as he tried to bear Hermione away for a consoling drink.
Hermione shrugged him off. She wasn’t going to let such a common little man take advantage.
Alpheus had laughed as heartily as anyone over Dame Hermione’s humiliation, until Rannaldini sidled up to him.
‘May I be honest, Alpheus? You look in great shape in those nude shots.’ Alpheus preened. ‘But in future I think you should leave off the false nose. It looks a leetle grotesque.’
Later, on the terrace, oblivious of an exquisite coral sunset, Hermione and Alpheus could be seen berating a sleeping Tristan.
Sexton was not cast down by Hermione’s rejection. He had just come back from Cannes where, showing a ten-minute trailer of Chloe and Alpheus in the sack in order to sell more distribution rights, he’d had to massage even bigger egos than theirs. Now he retreated to the production office and continued four different deals on four different mobiles. ‘I may look calm,’ he was fond of telling people, ‘but I’m not.’
Poor Hype-along Cassidy was not feeling calm either. Controlling the publicity was a nightmare. Hermione, incensed that nothing about herself had appeared recently, was unaware that her sacked make-up girl had just dumped in News of the World: ‘How I Concealed Dame Hermione’s Turkey Neck, and How She Ate Technicians for Breakfast.’
Hype-along’s rise at dawn on Sunday mornings to empty the village shop of papers was becoming a common occurrence. He’d also had terrible trouble with Baby, who, when he’d taken him up for interviews in London, had fallen asleep over drinks with the Guardian, and on the way to lunch with Lynn Barber had jumped taxi to buy clothes in Jermyn Street and not been traced till the following day.
Saddest of all, Tristan, the person to whom everyone wanted to speak, was so violently anti-press he wouldn’t give interviews at all. Hype-along, however, was working towards a quiet lunch at the Old Bell with Valerie Grove of The Times.
‘I think Oscar and Chloe are an item,’ Griselda told everyone, as Chloe looked more and more magical in the rushes and Oscar slept even more during the day.
But Chloe was not out of the woods. Baby was watching porn on the Internet one afternoon when up popped a teenage Chloe, cavorting with a black girl and a goat.
‘Goodness,’ gasped Lucy, when Baby rushed in to tell her. ‘Was the goat female?’
‘I saw its udder shudder. In mitigation, it did appear to be having a good time.’
‘I do hope Rannaldini doesn’t know about it,’ shivered Lucy. ‘I’m sure he’d use it against her.’
Someone was pinching clothes from Wardrobe, especially ties. Griselda and Simone, whose continuity was being screwed up, went out to the Heavenly Host to drown their sorrows and asked Lucy to join them, which at least gave Lucy a chance to quiz Simone about Tristan.
‘What’s his auntie Hortense like?’
‘A battleaxe, who demand the whole time,’ sighed Simone. ‘And not at all motherly to Uncle Tristan. When she drop him as a baby in drawing room, she ring for maid to pick him up.’
Then Simone added slyly: ‘Valentin, Sylvestre and Ogborne wanted to crash dinner tonight, Lucy. They all fancy you, but they know you only ’ave eyes for Uncle Tristan.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ spluttered Lucy, sending her glass of red flying. ‘Of course I don’t.’ Then, as she frantically mopped up with her pink scarf, ‘I wouldn’t dream—’
‘Dream is perhaps the only thing you should do,’ said Simone gently. ‘I love my uncle Tristan but he is very damaged.’
Terrified by the ghostly sightings inside Valhalla, Lucy had taken to sleeping outside in her make-up caravan, which seemed less claustrophobic than those little cells and long, dark, spooky corridors. But returning from the Heavenly Host, as she scuttled past silent generators and empty dark-windowed Hair and Wardrobe departments, she wasn’t sure. It would be so easy for a ghost to leap out from behind an empty lorry. Even the mo
on and the stars had deserted her.
As she approached her caravan, still upset by what Simone had said about Tristan, she froze at the sound of pitiful, anguished sobbing. Oh, God, was it the ghost of Caroline Beddoes, mourning her lost love, the blacksmith?
‘You might at least try and look fierce,’ she hissed at James, who’d stopped in his tracks with his head on one side.
The sobbing grew more pitiful. Lucy’s Dutch courage evaporated.
‘Who’s there?’ she quavered, as she unlocked the caravan door, screaming as a grey shadowy figure loomed over her.
Then, as she fumbled for the light switch, she heard James’s bony tail whacking against the open door and Rozzy’s choked voice saying, ‘Don’t turn it on, I look so terrible, and I don’t want any of the others to know.’
‘Whatever’s the matter? Let me get you a drink.’
‘I don’t want one.’
Lucy did. As she fumbled her way to the fridge, Rozzy was racked by a fit of coughing. Then it all came tumbling out. She’d been to the doctor that evening to hear the result of some tests, and been told she’d got throat cancer.
‘Oh, Rozzy.’ Lucy collapsed on the bench seat opposite.
‘There are lots of things one can do,’ wept Rozzy. ‘Voice boxes, treatment, operations and things, but my career’s finished. I’ll never sing again. Even worse, we’re so broke, Lucy, and I’m all we’ve got to live on. I feel the prison doors clanging shut on a solvent future.’
Lucy was devastated.
‘You’ll be able to earn money as a PA. Everyone thinks you’re brilliant. You must get a second opinion. The Campbell-Blacks and Rannaldini have a brilliant private doctor, James Benson.’
‘I couldn’t possibly afford him.’
‘I can,’ said Lucy stoutly, as she took a bottle out of the fridge. ‘You’ve been so good to me.’
As soon as she’d poured Rozzy a drink, Lucy wrote her out a cheque for six hundred pounds. After all, she got paid at the end of the month.
Later, refusing all Lucy’s entreaties to sleep in the caravan, Rozzy insisted on dragging herself back to the cells.
‘I don’t want people suspecting anything.’
‘You must tell Glyn.’
‘I can’t.’ Rozzy started to cry again. ‘He’ll be so cross with me. Thank you, Lucy, for being such a friend.’
Lucy didn’t sleep all night, thinking of a ravishing voice that would sing no more, like a nightingale being strangled. She had been sworn to secrecy, but Tristan, seeing her red eyes next morning, wheedled the truth out of her and was equally horrified. Pretending he’d no idea that Rozzy was ill, he casually asked her out to dinner. Inevitably Rozzy asked Lucy to do her make-up.
‘I can’t let Tristan dine with an awful old hag.’
At the Old Bell, away from gossips, Tristan told Rozzy he’d been asked to direct Der Rosenkavalier at Glyndebourne. ‘Eef your voice is rested enough, I would like you to sing the Marschallin. It won’t be for two years.’
It was lucky they were sitting in a dark alcove so no-one could see Rozzy weeping again. Tristan knew she would never be able to take up the offer: she might be dead in two years, if, as Lucy suspected, she had secondaries elsewhere, but at least it would give her hope.
Next day Rozzy was beside herself. ‘I never dreamed Tristan thought that much of me,’ she kept saying to Lucy, who was bitterly ashamed to find herself feeling irritated.
At the end of May, the weather finally gave way to heatwave. Rozzy coughed more in the dry, dusty heat and grew thinner, her adoring eyes growing bigger in her shrunken face as she gazed at Tristan. Bernard gazed longingly at Rozzy, but even on the hottest day he wouldn’t take off his shirt in case it dented his authority. He encouraged Wolfie to do the same.
For the first year ever, Rannaldini didn’t sprinkle his lawns, so they would look more parched and Spanish. He allowed Mr Brimscombe to water only selected plants: the rest could die of thirst, thus realizing his plan of a Buckingham Palace sweep down to the lake, which was getting perilously low.
Again, despite delays, rows and nightmarish re-scheduling, beautiful scenes were being shot, particularly of the great duet in which gallant Posa defies Philip II on the subject of religious persecution. Here, he so captivates the King, he is nicknamed ‘the King’s Favourite’ by the entire court. It became a running gag on the set that anyone singled out by Tristan became ‘le favori du roi’.
Playing Posa movingly, however, was not enough to Mikhail, who was getting bored. Paradise was a lovely little village but he wished there were more of it. He was also frightfully jealous that Baby was about to have a shove-and-grunt scene with Chloe.
The occasion, shot in the cow-parsley in the shade of a huge lime to blot out the burning sun, was not without incident. They were just about to turn over, when Lucy hissed, ‘Cover up, Chloe, nous avons company.’
It was Percy the Parson, pretending to be birdwatching.
‘Obviously looking for great tits,’ said Ogborne as, with great presence of mind, Wolfie whipped off his dark blue polo shirt and pulled it over Chloe’s head.
The beauty of his young, broad-shouldered body was lost on no-one. Simone immediately took a Polaroid.
‘Oh, hunky, hunky dory,’ sighed Baby.
‘I’ve never been topless before,’ joked Wolfie, to hide his embarrassment.
‘It’s Baby the vicar’s mad about,’ hissed Chloe, as Percy raised his binoculars to peer through an elder bush. ‘Better slip a dunce’s hat over his cock.’
‘My cock is not a dunce.’
‘May I have this dunce?’ asked Meredith, who shouldn’t have been there either, as there were no sets to dress, and everyone collapsed with laughter.
Precious shadows drained away until at last Percy moved on.
‘Get Wolfie’s shirt off, Chloe,’ yelled Tristan. ‘Christ, I feel like Icarus about to melt,’ he added, taking off his director’s cap to mop his brow with his arm.
‘At least you don’t have to sustain a hard-on,’ grumbled Baby.
‘Dong Carlos,’ said Chloe.
They had all corpsed once more when Tabitha thundered round the corner on The Engineer, who shied violently and nearly unseated her. The sight of Tristan, a half-naked Wolfie and all the crew leering joyfully at a naked Chloe and Baby, additionally put her into orbit.
‘You disgusting perve,’ she screamed at Tristan, ‘turning yourselves on making revolting porn movies.’
Swinging The Engineer round, she galloped off in a cloud of dust.
‘Pissed as usual,’ drawled Baby. ‘I dropped off a cheque for her husband last night. Even Sharon was drunk.’
‘Don’t be a bitch, Baby,’ said Lucy furiously.
‘Shut up, all of you,’ shouted Bernard, seeing how upset Tristan was.
But the fun had gone out of the day.
As Chloe walked into the canteen Wolfie handed her a big glass of iced lime juice.
‘Oh, you angel,’ said Chloe, taking a great gulp. ‘Will you marry me when you grow up?’
‘I’m afraid there’s rather a long queue,’ piped up Meredith. ‘I’d like a very small prawn salad, Maria darling.’
Maria, the cook, loved watching the French crew. She loved the sensual way they tore apart their bread, and undressed their prawns with beautifully manicured fingers, knotting their napkins round their necks to protect their perfectly ironed shirts, propping their knives and forks up on their plates, savouring what they were eating, drinking each glass of wine slowly and reflectively, chattering all the time.
Tristan, although he often forgot to eat, would make love in the same leisurely fashion, imagined Maria. Happily married, with a baby on the way, she could still allow herself to daydream. She had been to the hospital for a scan the day before and proudly produced a photograph of the baby.
‘Oh, how lovely!’ cried Lucy ecstatically. ‘Look at its nose, and its head and little legs.’
‘Rather like E.T.’ Meredith took t
he photograph gingerly as if it were a newborn baby.
‘What a little angel,’ said Oscar, who was the proud father of five.
‘Hello, Tab,’ shouted Griselda, as Tabitha half sheepishly, half defiantly, sidled into the canteen and dropped her bag on an empty table. ‘Come and look at this sweet little babba.’
‘Oh, no,’ Lucy muttered. But it was too late.
As Tab gazed at the photograph, tears trickled down her cheeks.
‘It’s adorable,’ she whispered. Next moment she had fled.
‘What is the matter with that girl today?’ grumbled Ogborne.
‘Someone’s left a bag,’ said Simone, who noticed everything.
Inside were only a tattered Dick Francis, a bottle of Evian, a Coutts Switch card and photos of Isa, Sharon and The Engineer.
‘It’s Tab’s,’ said Wolfie.
‘Not the sort to bother with a compact, lipstick or even a comb,’ said Chloe dismissively.
‘She doesn’t need to,’ Wolfie was amazed to hear himself saying.
Behind his smooth, broad, fast-browning back, Meredith and Baby exchanged glances.
‘Do you think he and Tab are going to be the next item?’ Griselda whispered excitedly to Simone, who was suddenly looking very sad.
Tab refused to answer her telephone but, seeing her dirty green Golf outside Magpie Cottage, Wolfie decided to return her bag in the tea-break. Through the car windows, he breathed in great wafts of wild garlic pestled by rain and the soapy smell of the hawthorns. In the lane up to Magpie Cottage, light brown puddles reflected hedgerows and overhanging trees like an album of sepia photographs.
Tab’s lawn was blue with speedwell. A few white irises were fighting a losing battle with the nettles round the egg-yolk-yellow front door. The reek of more wild garlic from the woods behind didn’t altogether disguise the stench of unemptied dustbins. No-one answered the bell, so Wolfie let himself in.
