by Jilly Cooper
Wolfie was neatly stacking the letters and tying up Laurent’s with their scarlet ribbon.
‘If Tristan is Laurent and Delphine’s son,’ he said soberly, ‘he’s not only a Montigny, but can marry and have children by whoever he likes.’
Lucy’s hair was white with dust, her face filthy and streaked with tears. ‘So we found out what we came here for,’ she said slowly, then realizing the full implications: ‘Oh, Wolfie, I hope it works out for you.’
Hortense burst out laughing when she saw Lucy’s dusty hair. ‘You look older than I do. I hope you were surprised by what you discovered.’
‘Stunned.’ Sitting on the bed, Lucy took Hortense’s hands. ‘I’m sorry I was so horrible yesterday. I’m terribly glad for Tristan, but those letters are appalling. I understand totally why you didn’t want it to come out. Poor Étienne. But why did someone as gorgeous as Delphine marry such an old man in the first place?’
‘Rannaldini encouraged her,’ said Hortense. ‘She was a bit of a “raver”, I think it’s called, and wanted to escape from her strait-laced family. Maxim detested Rannaldini and that’s why, in revenge, Rannaldini reinvented him as a sex-crazed rapist. Rannaldini persuaded Delphine of the doors Étienne would open, of the exciting life she would lead among the famous, how she’d be immortalized in his paintings.’
‘But what about Maxim?’
‘I always suspected’, Hortense lowered her voice conspiratorially, ‘that he wasn’t Delphine’s father. Her mother had an affaire with some actor called Sammy somebody. They were all Bohemians,’ she added with a sniff. ‘Maxim certainly doted on Delphine and immediately recognized Rannaldini as a rotter. He was even more distraught when she married Étienne, a notorious womanizer, even older than himself.’
‘So he wasn’t sectioned as a mad psychopath?’
‘Certainly not, he went a bit dotty at the end, as we all do, and died in a perfectly respectable nursing home.’
Thank goodness Wolfie was downstairs, not hearing more evidence of his father’s fearful lies.
‘What happened to Laurent’s mother?’
Hortense stroked her little greyhound reflectively.
‘She was Étienne’s third or fourth wife. Played bridge all day and, when Étienne pushed off, graduated to gin. Tripped over a black Labrador coming out of her bedroom in the dark one night and broke her neck falling down the stairs. Wonderful way to go.’
‘So that disposed of one granny,’ giggled Lucy. ‘I don’t mean to laugh, the whole thing must have been terrible.’
‘Terrible. Étienne was so excited about his new baby, then a fortnight later we heard Laurent had died in some explosion — friendly fire, it’s called. Étienne was inconsolable, so was Delphine, naturally, which touched Étienne because he felt she was sharing his unhappiness and at least they had a new life to look forward to together.
‘Then Laurent’s things were sent home, with all Delphine’s letters and, cruellest of all, Étienne’s little drawing. Étienne went on the rampage, found all Laurent’s letters locked in her jewel case, and nearly killed her. Next day she took an overdose, sent me a note begging my forgiveness and asking me to bring up Tristan.’
A farm dog bayed down in the valley. The little greyhound pricked up its velvet ears and stretched.
‘Everything was locked in Laurent’s room just as it was when he went off to Chad. Everyone thought Étienne was heartbroken, but it was the far more painful heartbreak of betrayal.’ Hortense lay back exhausted, her face very grey. ‘I probably shouldn’t have told you.’
‘You should. Tristan has to know, so he can understand Étienne and forgive him.’ Then, as she heard wheels on the gravel, banging doors and voices outside, ‘I must go.’
‘Dupont et cetera must be here,’ grumbled Hortense. ‘They’ll be devastated I’m not worse. You’d better escape out the back.’
‘I’ve been doing that all day. Look,’ Lucy plumped up Hortense’s pillows, ‘I wish I didn’t have to go. It’s been a privilege…’
‘Don’t go all sentimental on me,’ snapped Hortense. ‘Look after my boy.’ She handed Lucy a square package that felt like a picture. ‘Give this to him. You’ve got all the letters, haven’t you? Show them to him when the time is right, but don’t let them fall into other hands.’
‘You’ll see him again,’ said Lucy reassuringly.
‘Hurry,’ gasped Hortense. ‘The others will try to stop you.’
Still Lucy lingered, then tugging off her gold locket, she hung it round Hortense’s neck.
‘There’s a lovely dog inside,’ she stammered. ‘He’ll bring you luck.’
‘I’ll need it where I’m going,’ said Hortense wryly. ‘There’s no return ticket.’
‘D’you think Tristan will fire us?’ asked a worried Lucy as Wolfie considerably shortened the hired car’s life, jolting it over dusty cart-tracks.
‘Hardly, he’s still in prison.’ Wolfie swung into the road to the airport. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be home by the tea break.’ Then, seeing the crowd of gendarmes round the Gulf, ‘On second thoughts perhaps we won’t. I’d better drive.’ He swung the car round again.
‘We can’t leave the Gulf,’ said Lucy aghast.
‘It’s Cecilia’s now. At least I’ve flown it over half-way to Rome for her.’
‘But it’s nearly lunchtime, we won’t get home until early tomorrow morning.’
‘Or until tomorrow midday, if we stop somewhere nice for the night. You’ve pulled off a miracle and we’re going to celebrate.’
75
The moment he was released on Monday morning, Tristan showered away every speck of prison dirt and drenched himself in Eau Sauvage. To match his mood, he then selected black jeans, a black shirt and, because the temperature had dropped fifteen degrees, a dark brown cashmere jersey he’d never worn before.
Pale and more shadowed than ever under the eyes, he had shed another half-stone in prison, and looked as dramatically elongated and demon-haunted as an El Greco saint.
To forget the horrors of prison and to blot out the even more nightmarish prospect of the Mail outing him and Claudine tomorrow, Tristan, as was his custom, plunged into work. But as he hurtled the Aston towards George’s house, his dreams of using a polo match under a burning sun as a ritualized symbol of conflict were shattered. After a night of torrential rain, George’s polo field was as full of lakes and as green as Ireland. His only compensation was driving through a huge puddle and drenching the paparazzi hanging around outside George’s massive electric gates.
Inside, it was difficult to distinguish the massive police and press presence from George’s heavies and the fleet of extras who’d been bussed in to act as policemen, paparazzi and Philip’s bodyguards.
Behind the house, which crouched ox-blood red and elephantine on a hill, a stretch of park had been levelled into a polo field surrounded by huge bell-shaped trees now dark and swollen with rain. Overhead, like a flotilla of battleships, hung charcoal-grey clouds.
On the edge of the field, outside a yellow and white striped tent, whose roof was buckling under the downpour, a small band in red uniforms was dispiritedly wringing out their instruments. Seeing his arrival, the commentator stopped telling the shivering extras in their flowery dresses and pale suits that the gallant Marquis of Posa had just scored a goal, and welcomed back ‘our director’, Tristan de Montigny.
Tristan was in no mood for pleasantries. Ignoring the ripple of applause and the large ‘Bienvenu, Tristan’ banner, he drove over to the unit, where the place was under water and in uproar, because neither Lucy nor Wolfie had turned up. Tristan was appalled. It was like coming home on a bleak winter night to find the pipes frozen and the central heating kaput. No-one had seen them since Saturday morning.
‘I know they’ll be found face down in a field,’ sobbed Simone.
‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snapped Tristan, who’d gone cold at the same thought.
All around him singers, who’d been soothed
and flattered by Lucy for the past three months, were having tantrums and making fearful fusses about catching cold. A fleet of make-up artists had been bussed in anyway to handle all the extras. The most experienced, hijacked to look after the stars, must have graduated from the set of the Hammer House of Horror.
Granny looked about as menacing as a Brylcreemed Barbara Cartland. Tab, Pushy and Chloe had vermilion lips and black-ringed eyes like Brides of Dracula. Mikhail’s drink-reddened face clashed horribly with his crimson polo shirt.
‘Why isn’t Lucy here to sort out my bags and my double chin?’ grumbled Baby, who, having played polo until the stars came out with Rupert’s cronies then pigged out on Taggie’s sea trout, three helpings of loganberry torte and copious glasses of wine, was now trying to alleviate his hangover with a massive gin and tonic.
Alpheus was so furious that Griselda had hidden his noble brow and chestnut locks under a straw hat with a Blues and Royals ribbon that he’d surreptitiously fed the offending headgear to Sharon and Trevor, who’d rushed on to the field noisily tearing it to shreds.
Nemesis had struck swiftly. The new make-up artist didn’t have Lucy’s blow-drying and colouring skills, and Alpheus ended up with corkscrew curls the colour of mango chutney and looked like Paddy Ashdown in a Shirley Temple wig.
Simone was in hysterics that any continuity had been shot to pieces. ‘How could Lucy do this to us?’ she stormed.
‘Manage without her,’ snapped Tristan.
Nor had Tristan dreamt, as the day progressed, how much he would miss Wolfie to field telephone calls, to keep track of his belongings, and control the extras. Rupert had high-handedly sent over a couple of his grooms with all his dogs, and all his polo-playing friends’ dogs because they all wanted their dogs in the film and because one always sees lots of dogs at polo. The dogs proceeded to fight and bark and mount each other. Rupert, meanwhile, had buggered off to a race meeting at Ayr.
‘I vish his bloody daughter had gone too,’ grumbled Mikhail.
One of the first sounds Tristan heard and ignored was Tab, yelling her head off in true Campbell-Black fashion. She was desperately nervous about making her polo film début playing against world-class players, even if she had known them since she was a child. She had wanted to look ravishing for Tristan’s return, and been turned into the Town Tart by this ghastly make-up. It was all Lucy’s fault. And where was utterly bloody Wolfie to hold her hand, find her whip and absorb abuse like a punch bag?
Even worse, as Mistress of the Horse, she felt it her duty to see the singers played properly. Baby was good, but Mikhail had an unnerving habit of dropping his reins and swinging his stick round with both hands like a Tartar warlord as he thundered down the field.
‘For Gawd’s sake, watch him,’ Sexton pleaded with Tab. Having insurance claims already on a murdered producer and a recently absentee director, he didn’t want Mikhail taking out Ricky France-Lynch the England captain, or his forwards Seb and Dommie Carlisle.
Mikhail was sulking because George’s open house had suddenly become closed when one of Georgie’s heavies had caught him sidling out with a little Watteau and a Sickert under his polo shirt.
‘I know the murderer’s still at large,’ giggled Flora, ‘but Mikhail seems to be taking bulletproof vests to extremes.’
She still looked haunted and desperately tired as she and George hardly left each other’s side. As soon as the wrap party was over, they were off to Cornwall with Trevor.
Everyone was relieved to have moved away from Valhalla’s dark mazes and haunted cloisters. Rannaldini’s doomladen overture, pouring out of the speakers, however, was a constant reminder that his killer had not been caught.
The violence of the polo was equally unnerving, ponies thundering over grass as slippery as buttered spinach, sticks clashing, balls hurtling like cannon shot, often into the crowd, players deliberately colliding. The ponies kept jumping out of their thin thoroughbred skins and taking off, because the cast, upstaging each other, continually broke into snatches of their next opera or song cycle to prove there was work after Carlos.
‘Telephone, Tristan,’ shouted Bernard.
It was Claudine in hysterics. It was all Tristan’s fault, for barging into the cottage in Wales, the police had already been round, her maid was threatening to dump to the Express, and Jean-Louis to divorce her.
And she would have let me swing, thought Tristan savagely. He remembered Gablecross telling him that in big murder cases several marriages always broke up.
Couldn’t he get his friend Rupert Campbell-Black to pull strings and stop the Mail? wailed Claudine. Tristan said he’d try and hung up.
‘I don’t want to be bothered with any calls,’ he ordered Jessica, who was nervously standing in for Wolfie.
While they were waiting for the cameras to reload and reposition, he finally got through to the château. Hortense was obviously a little better, as she was in a meeting, unable to be disturbed. Tristan might not have been so sanguine if he’d known with whom. He left a message with Florence that he’d be down on Wednesday after the wrap party.
When they broke for a late lunch, Jessica said a French lady had rung five times on the unit mobile.
‘Non, non, non,’ howled Tristan, as it rang again. ‘I can’t talk to anyone.’
Next moment he had been buttonholed by Alpheus, complaining about both Tabitha and the make-up artist, and Chloe complaining that Baby was being gratuitously offensive, and had nearly ridden his pony over her.
They were soon joined by Pushy.
‘Could we have another make-up artist? I know I can look prettier than this, Tristan.’
God, he missed Wolfie to send them packing. Leaving them, in mid-bellyache, on his way to his caravan, he passed Jessica telling Bernard that Lucy expected to be back by mid-morning tomorrow.
Tristan swung round in fury. ‘Lucy rang? Why didn’t you put her on?’
‘You didn’t want any calls.’
‘I didn’t mean Lucy, you stupid bitch. Get her back at once.’
‘I didn’t take her number,’ stammered Jessica, appalled by such unaccustomed rudeness.
‘You bloody idiot.’
Jessica burst into tears.
Tristan couldn’t remember being so angry. All he had wanted during his lunch break was to pour out his heart to Lucy about the horrors of prison and the difficulties of filming polo. Also, because Lucy had been so wonderfully comforting when he had found out Maxim was his father and had been forced to give up Tab he felt he should perhaps have provided the last piece of the jigsaw, and levelled with her about Claudine. He wanted to explain, before Lucy read about it in tomorrow’s Mail, that the love that had obscured his vision for the past three years had suddenly been blown away like mist at sea. But if Lucy wasn’t getting back till mid-morning, it would probably be too late.
‘Oh, you’re wearing my sweater. It really suits you.’
It was several seconds before Tristan realized the happy voice belonged to Rozzy, who was looking really pretty. All the lines in her face seemed to have ironed out. He’d forgotten she’d given him this jersey.
She tried to cover up for Lucy, which was difficult when James shot out of Wardrobe and did four pirouettes, nearly strangling himself on his lead, because he too was pleased to see Tristan. Then he slunk back in despair because he wasn’t with Lucy.
‘I’ve had to tie him to the table leg because he keeps following me on to the set.’
‘Poor old boy.’ Tristan unclipped James’s lead. ‘Where the hell’s your mistress?’
‘She’ll turn up,’ said Rozzy. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ she added, leading him towards his caravan. ‘Which did you like best, my tarte aux oignons or the quiche Lorraine?’
‘They were both marvellous,’ mumbled Tristan, who’d been far too uptight to eat anything in prison. ‘My God!’
For a second he thought he’d let himself into the wrong caravan. There were vases of wild flowers everywhere.
‘Marjoram, honeysuckle, scabious, forget-me-not, bellflower, thyme, wild basil and those dark purple bugle-like flowers are called self-heal. I picked two vases of them, because I know you will heal after your horrible experience.’
‘You’re so kind,’ muttered Tristan, breathing in the honeysuckle, which reminded him of Lucy’s lone sprig in prison.
How dare Rozzy ponce up his caravan! All the books and magazines had been straightened. All the notes secured under a paperweight. The floor was hoovered, even the windows cleaned, so everyone could see when he was there. He wanted to scream.
‘It’s very kind, Rozzy.’
‘It’s been a pleasure.’ She added playfully, ‘I’ve made you a sort of brunch. I know how strong you like your coffee. Sit down and relax. I’ve made you an omelette and Mrs Brimscombe picked me these with the dew on them this morning.’
‘Rozzy, please.’ Tristan opened his mouth in protest, and Rozzy popped a raspberry into it.
‘Anyway,’ she added, as the rattle of rain on the roof increased, ‘you can’t film at the moment.’
‘You’re incorrigible.’
‘I’m not taking “non” for an answer.’ Rozzy got a couple of croissants out of the microwave, and dropped one on his side plate.
For a second, Tristan was tempted to pour out his problems. But Rozzy had enough troubles of her own.
Having cut him a slice of omelette, primrose yellow and oozing herbs and butter, she poured him coffee and orange juice, and shoved the butter plate against his side plate. As she reached behind him to get the pepper-pot out of the cupboard, he felt her breasts brush against him and had to steel himself not to flinch. Rozzy put a hand on his shoulder.
‘You’re so tense, I’ll give you a massage later.’
Suddenly the caravan seemed tiny. James, sulking on the sofa, was no chaperon. Next moment Rozzy’s hand had clenched on his shoulder as the rain rattle on the roof was augmented by a rat-tat-tat on the door.
