Score!

5

The Gramophone Awards took place five days later over a splendid lunch at the Savoy. Record producers and agents in sharp suits gossiped guardedly as they awaited their illustrious artists in the foyer. Women press officers, their shiny highlighted hair and long golden legs belying the severity of their neat black suits, hooked musical big fish out from their pools of admirers and ferried them like children to the right table. The progress was maddeningly slow because it involved so much hugging and hailing on the way.

More hot and famous than anyone, but hidden behind dark glasses, Tristan reached the table of Shepherd Denston, international artists’ agents, virtually unnoticed. He was delighted, however, when his host, Howie Denston, a fawning little creep who ran the London office, informed him that Liberty Productions’ cast for Don Carlos had cleaned up in the awards.

Alpheus P. Shaw, who was playing Philip II — Howie consulted his pocket computer — was Artist of the Year. Glamorous Chloe Catford, the mezzo, who had posed naked on her winning record sleeve, was the People’s Favourite. Solo Vocal had gone to Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, the Opera Award to Hermione, while Early Opera had been awarded to Granville Hastings, who’d been cast as the Grand Inquisitor. Fat Franco’s Italian Love Songs had been voted Best-selling Record. Most prestigious of all, Rannaldini had won Record of the Year.

‘Odd that you all know in advance,’ said Tristan, accepting a glass of Sancerre.

‘Not at all.’ Howie Denston lowered his voice. ‘Singers have such monstrous egos you’d never get them to an award ceremony unless they knew they’d won.’

Nor was it a coincidence that all the cast of Don Carlos — except Fat Franco — were Shepherd Denston artists. This was because Rannaldini had recently wangled himself the chairmanship of the agency. He had therefore ensured that 20 per cent of the vast fees earned by the singers in the film would go back into Shepherd Denston’s pockets.

Howie Denston, known as Mr Margarine because he spread his oily charm so widely over his artists, had now abandoned Tristan and bolted back to the foyer to await Hermione and his new chairman, who were probably having a bonk upstairs and bound to be late. Tristan didn’t mind being left. He was always happy watching people.

Also at the Shepherd Denston table, besides the award winners, was the retiring chairman, who had an ulcer. Next to him sat Serena Westwood, out of pinstripe into clinging scarlet, acting cool towards Tristan, determined to show him what he had missed by not seducing her in Prague.

Rannaldini, who’d done the seating plan, had also sat Serena next to Giuseppe Cavalli, a hunky young bass, who’d be winning awards in a year or two. Giuseppe had been cast as the ghost of the Emperor, Charles V, who appears at the end of the opera and draws his grandson, Carlos, into the safety of the tomb.

No-one was likely to be safe with Giuseppe, who was an unghostly thug with shoulder-length black curls. Given to check shirts tucked into bulging jeans, he had a huge fan mail from women, but was in fact the lover of Granville Hastings, known as ‘Granny’, who could have uncheerfully murdered Rannaldini for continually fixing Giuseppe up with rich single women. Lone parents were even more predatory than loan sharks, reckoned Granny.

Elegant, tall, silver-haired, always exquisitely dressed, Granny appeared a cosy old pussy-cat. Inwardly his heart was breaking. For years he had sung Philip II, the finest bass role in the repertoire, but now, at nearly sixty-four, he had been demoted to the just as difficult but more pantomime villain role of the Grand Inquisitor. As the bigger part, Philip also got the bigger pay cheque, and keeping Giuseppe was very expensive.

Alpheus P. Shaw III, a very successful, self-regarding American bass sitting at the head of the table, was pointedly ignoring Granny because they had just sung Philip and the Inquisitor in the same production in Paris. Granny, supposed to be blind in the part, had totally upstaged Alpheus by bumping into furniture and at one moment, when Alpheus was hitting a ravishing top note, putting his finger into a candle flame and saying, ‘Ouch.’ Alpheus, who had no sense of humour, had been outraged.

A magnificent-looking man, with red-gold hair brushed back from a noble forehead, Alpheus looked as though he’d been carved out of Mount Rushmore. Married twenty years and the father of three fine sons, he was also a stern upholder of family values.

As he forked up a smoked-salmon parcel with his right hand, however, Alpheus’s left hand foraged between the plump, white thighs of Chloe the mezzo. He and Chloe had fallen in love two years ago when they both appeared in Aida. Engagements had separated them, so they had accepted parts in Don Carlos to be together in the long weeks of recording and filming. Alas, Alpheus’s wife, Cheryl, harboured suspicions, and was threatening to join him on location.

The great din of chatter suddenly stopped as Rannaldini stalked in with all the prowling chutzpah of a leopard who has no intention of changing a single spot.

No star in decline wins Record of the Year.

‘It’s God,’ murmured two record executives, as he swept past them.

He was followed by Hermione Harefield, looking slightly flushed. The lunchers giggled as they noticed the jacket of her purple Chanel suit had been wrongly buttoned up.

‘Gangway, gangway for Dame Hermione,’ yelled Howie Denston pummelling aside other late-comers and sycophants, as Hermione glided across the room as stately as the QE2.

‘I so wanted to creep in here anonymously,’ she was saying loudly.

Embracing Tristan, with whom she intended having an affaire on location, kissing Sexton with whom she did not, Hermione totally ignored that upstart Chloe the mezzo, whom she disliked intensely, and Serena, whom she’d not forgiven for sending the wrong flowers, and Granny, who had never treated her with due reverence. Instead she turned to Alpheus, who was going to sing her husband.

‘Your Majesty.’ Hermione curtsied skittishly.

‘Madama,’ replied a bowing Alpheus, equally skittishly as he held her chair for her.

Everyone was very sad Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, hadn’t made the lunch. She was singing Octavian in Budapest, but sent tons of love. Later, a delightedly squirming Howie would accept the Solo Vocal Award on her behalf.

‘Rozzy’s so lovely,’ sighed Chloe, as Alpheus removed his burrowing hand to cut up his chicken Cenerentola. ‘She’s got no ego problem, unlike some.’ She glared at Hermione.

‘I hope,’ Hermione glared back, ‘that Rozzy is not overstretching her voice. I never do more than forty concerts a year.’

‘Why have you never done a Three Sopranos, Dame Hermione?’ asked the retiring chairman, with all the enthusiasm of one who knows he will never have to handle it.

‘There is only one soprano,’ said Alpheus.

Hermione bowed her head. ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’

Conversation kept being interrupted by waiters grinding black pepper and pouring wine and water.

‘Still or fizzy, Dame Hermione?’

‘Still, please.’

‘One would have known that you would choose only something that ran deep like yourself,’ observed Alpheus playfully.

‘Great big plonker,’ muttered Granny.

‘Amen to that,’ said Chloe.

Alpheus was hung like a donkey.

‘Oh, look,’ she nudged Tristan, ‘here’s your leading man.’

Causing howls of mirth by wearing a vast T-shirt saying, ‘I’ve beaten anorexia’, Franco Palmieri, who was playing Carlos, had reached the Megagram table next door. Appropriating four buckling chairs, he waved jauntily at Chloe then scowled at Alpheus, whom he detested even more than Granny did.

‘Fat Franco longs to be the Fourth Tenor,’ Chloe whispered to Tristan, ‘but very sensibly the others won’t let that conniving shit near them. Don’t worry,’ she added, as she picked the fruit out of her glazed apricot tart, ‘hatred always produces incredible sexual chemistry.’

‘I prefer happy team,’ protested Tristan.

‘With Rannaldini as team leader?’ asked Chloe incredulously. ‘They say his dagger follows close upon his smiles.’

‘He is very great friend,’ said Tristan coldly.

‘Good, perhaps you’ll have a benign influence on him.’

Tristan was heartbreaking, Chloe decided. Those bruised eyes seemed to read her soul. ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ she added. ‘The funeral must have been harrowing. Claudine Lauzerte looked stunning.’

‘She did.’

But even Claudine’s divine presence had not distracted a paparazzi frantic to find out, among other things, why Rannaldini (in even more built-up shoes so as not to be dwarfed by Tristan’s three tall brothers) had carried the coffin.

Noticing Tristan’s hands clamped to his thighs to stop them shaking, Chloe said gently, ‘When I got my first Amneris at the ENO, I splurged on one of your father’s drawings.’

‘He would have loved painting you.’ Tristan found he could say it without too much pain. Chloe couldn’t have been prettier, he decided, very French, in fact. Her straw-coloured bob had a thick fringe, which emphasized permanently smiling, slightly dissipated eyes. Tristan had also noticed long slim legs and a black cashmere bosom, arching like a purring furry cat inside her dove-grey suit.

Glancing up, her eyes widened and held his for longer than necessary. She would be perfect to screw on location, he thought, but since Étienne’s death his libido seemed to have gone into hibernation. He knew he had snubbed Serena the other night, and would have to put in a lot of spadework if she wasn’t going to act up during the recording. Idly he noticed Chloe putting Sweetex into Alpheus’s cup of coffee, and wondered if they were having an affaire.

‘Carlos loved his granddad, Charles V, like Prince Charles loves the Queen Mum,’ Sexton was telling Granny’s boyfriend, Giuseppe, who had sunk nearly two bottles of red and was still flirting with Serena in the hope of a fat record contract.

At last Rannaldini had reached the table. Wafting ‘Maestro’, his famous scent, created specially for him by Givenchy, longing to goad all the male members of his cast that in Mikhail Pezcherov he had discovered the greatest bass baritone of the age, he immediately insisted that everyone swap places.

‘It is crazy,’ grumbled Tristan, who was now next to Granny, ‘Giuseppe, who is twenty-eight like me, is playing not only Alpheus’s father, but Fat Franco’s grandfather, and he must be half Franco’s age.’

‘That’s opera for you,’ said Granny, in his beautiful voice. ‘Although no stretch of the imagination would go round Franco’s waist these days.’

‘Have you met Rupert Campbell-Black?’ asked Tristan.

‘I would walk naked across the Arctic Circle for a touch of his nether lip,’ sighed Granny.

‘He thinks Don Carlos can’t work with Hermione and Franco.’

‘Then you’d better stamp your pretty foot and replace them, my dear.’

Hermione had finished her third helping of apricot tart when everyone was asked to toast the Queen.

‘Most people oughta be drinking to themselves,’ muttered Sexton. ‘Never seen such a bunch of fairies.’

A roll of drums, and the awards started. Having accepted his gold statuette of a harpist, Alpheus proceeded to thank everyone, from the sound engineer to his wife Cheryl, his fine sons and Mr Bones, his German shepherd, ending with Mozart who had, after all, composed the music.

‘How very caring.’ Hermione clapped vigorously. ‘I’m much looking forward to working with Alpheus.’

She was irritated that it was too dark, except on the platform, for everyone to see how lovely she was looking. Tristan de Montigny was lovely-looking too, and even seemed to be getting on with that acid-tongued Granny. As well as an affaire, Hermione was looking forward to having many in-depth conversations about herself with Tristan.

Rannaldini was table-hopping again. Posing for the Daily Express with David Mellor, he smirkingly fingered the carpet burns on his knees and elbows, acquired while seducing Serena Westwood in her new office last night. It had made him feel like a schoolboy.

‘I’ll have her but I’ll not keep her long,’ he murmured, blowing Serena a kiss across the tables. Just long enough to control her during the recording so that she used exactly the takes he wanted.

There was a great cheer as the newly married Viking O’Neill, golden boy and first horn of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, who had hit Rannaldini across the room after the Appleton piano competition, sauntered up to collect his award for his recording of the Strauss concertos.

‘What a beauty,’ murmured Granny, putting on his spectacles.

‘If Polygram’ll release him, I want him to play first horn in Don Carlos,’ whispered Serena.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ A grinning Viking seized the microphone. ‘Once upon a time, three dogs took part in an intelligence test at Crufts. They had to arrange a pile of bones in the best shape. The first dog who came in was an architect. He looked at the bones, built a pretty little house and everyone clapped and clapped.

‘The next dog was a town planner,’ went on Viking, in his soft Irish accent, ‘who scoffed at the dog architect’s little house, knocked it down, and rebuilt the bones as a beautiful town. Everyone clapped even more. Finally, the third dog came in. He was a tenor, and he ate all the bones, shagged the other two dogs and asked for the afternoon off.’

Such screams of laughter greeted this joke that Viking could hardly be heard thanking his record producer, the orchestra and his divine new wife, the conductor Abigail Rosen, which brought even more resounding cheers.

Returning to the Polygram table, Viking disappeared into the vast congratulatory embrace of Fat Franco on his way back from a grope or a toot or some other mischief. For a second, Franco pretended to box Viking’s ears for making snide jokes about tenors, then the two men put their heads together until Franco gave a bellow of laughter.

Seeing his chosen Don Carlos collapse on to his four gold chairs again, scooping up petit fours as though they were Smarties, Rannaldini shouted rudely: ‘Unless you give up sweet things, Franco, you’ll never get into Charles V’s tomb.’

‘You no give them up,’ shouted back Franco. ‘Viking tell me how you sail through air like dashing elderly gent on flying trapeze and flatten sweet trolley and member of Arts Council.’

You wait, vowed Rannaldini, as the roars of laughter subsided. I’ll cook your goose before you’ve had time to stuff your gross belly with it.

At the announcement that Chloe had won the People’s Award, the entire room rose cheering to its feet, except Hermione.

‘I am clapped so often that I am not used to clapping,’ she told Alpheus, as he returned, brandishing his award.

As Chloe, in her discreet dove-grey suit, reached the platform, a huge blow-up of her naked on the sleeve of her prize-winning record appeared, to even louder roars of applause, on the monitor.

As Serena put her hand on Giuseppe’s crotch, he fell into the petit fours.

‘Best place for him — young people need their sleep,’ said Granny, who was feeling much happier after a long chat with Tristan. The boy was too sweet for words and had wonderfully revolutionary views on playing the Grand Inquisitor.

‘Are you ready, Dame Hermione?’ asked one of the Identikit press officers, as vast illuminated olive-green letters announced the Opera Award of the Year.

‘This is the big one,’ said Hermione, whipping out her powder compact.

Meanwhile, losing no time for revenge — after all, Franco wasn’t a Shepherd Denston artist so they wouldn’t lose 20 per cent of his massive fee — Rannaldini was talking in an undertone to Howie Denston. ‘Do you know anything about a tenor called Baby Spinosissimo?’

‘Making waves in Australia, heartbreaking looks, I’ll check out his availability. And by the way,’ Howie lowered his voice, ‘we’ve got to watch Alpheus. He tried to get Liberty Productions, American Bravo and Shepherd Denston each to pick up the tab…’

‘You will ensure cash settlements for Dame Hermione,’ interrupted Rannaldini, as his mistress mounted the rostrum.

‘Good people,’ began Hermione, but alas, Rannaldini’s mobile had rung.

‘Tabitha is home, Maestro,’ said Clive, his leather-clad bodyguard, silkily.

Rannaldini leapt to his feet. ‘I ’ave to go,’ he told the astounded table.

‘But what about your award?’ cried an aghast Howie.

‘You accept eet,’ said Rannaldini blithely. ‘A family problem come up. I call you,’ he shouted to Tristan.

‘Most of all I would like to thank Maestro Rannaldini.’ Hermione wiped away a tear.

But she had lost her audience, as every eye followed Rannaldini out of the room.