Score!

21

As the Great Hall was being transformed by Meredith’s myrmidons into Philip II’s bedroom, they dined in the old Prussian blue dining room, which now had walls the tawny red of beef consommé, and a gold ceiling to match all the gold plate and the frames of the portraits on the walls. A brass trough filled with white daffodils stretched down the middle of the table.

‘“And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils,”’ said Tristan, who had been summoned to sit on Helen’s right, but hoped Lucy and therefore Tab might come and sit on his other side. But, tossing her ringlets, Pushy Galore nipped in and stole the seat.

‘How the hell did she get in here?’ Chloe hissed to Flora.

‘Sexton brought her. In that dress, she looks as though he ordered her from the Past Times Christmas catalogue. The last shall be first — she’ll probably end up marrying Tristan.’

‘Having cased the joint, she’ll more likely become the next Lady Rannaldini. As Helen clearly hasn’t thought we were worth a seating plan, shall we sit together?’

Flora nodded, clutching a furiously growling Trevor to stop him attacking James. She was actually in a state of shock. She’d had no idea her old flame Wolfie was working on the film or that he’d grown so devastatingly attractive. If only she’d bothered to wash her hair and change.

In honour of the stag hunt with which Don Carlos opens, they dined on the darkest, meltingly tender venison steeped in a rich red wine sauce.

‘The secret of venison is that it should be well hung,’ announced Hermione, scooping up most of the delicious celeriac purée.

‘Like blokes,’ agreed Baby.

‘Sublime, Rannaldini,’ announced Alpheus, determined to raise the tone. ‘How d’you make it so goddam tender?’

‘I eenjeck the marinade into the tissue with a hypodermic syringe,’ purred Rannaldini.

‘How gross,’ snapped Tabitha, and fed her venison to Sharon under the table.

Colin Milton wasn’t eating his venison either. ‘“Great Henry, the glorious King of France,”’ he muttered to himself, ‘“wishes to bestow the hand of his daughter…”’ Oh, hell, what came next?

His hand was shaking so dreadfully that when he tried to raise his glass of Château Mouton Rothschild 1949 to his lips, he spilt it.

‘Don’t waste that stuff, Colin,’ shouted Rannaldini, down the table. ‘Eet cost a fortune.’

Bastard, thought Lucy, who was already embarrassed because she had refused the venison.

Sitting beside her, Wolfie noticed her empty plate.

‘I don’t eat meat,’ she stammered. ‘I’ll be fine with vegetables.’

Wolfie stood up. ‘I’ll have a word with…’ he glanced up the table at Helen ‘… er, Mrs Rannaldini.’

‘Lady Rannaldini,’ howled Rannaldini. ‘Have you lost your manners, Wolfgang?’

An ugly flush spread over Wolfie’s face and his white-knuckled hands clenched the table. Lucy felt terrible, particularly when Mrs Brimscombe hobbled in, apologizing, with the most delectable vegetable lasagne.

‘I make it specially for you, Lucy,’ called Rannaldini, determined to ingratiate himself with Tabitha’s friend.

You’re still a bastard, thought Lucy, delighted that Wolfie was now defiantly emptying tomato ketchup over his venison.

When everyone was eating the lightest primrose yellow syllabub with bitter chocolate sauce, Tristan stood up. Having thanked Rannaldini and Helen for allowing their house to be invaded, he went on to talk about Don Carlos, repeating Verdi’s description of:

‘“A family drama in a princely house”, which must have been very like Valhalla. It is also a story about sexual jealousy and loneliness in high places.

‘Both Schiller and Verdi were obsessed with oppression,’ Tristan continued, ‘the tyranny of Philip II over his family and his subjects, the tyranny of the Church over everything. Today, the Church has loosed its stranglehold, instead we — and particularly the Royal Family and the government — are controlled by the media. That is why we have set our Don Carlos in modern dress, with a corrupt press baron replacing the Grand Inquisitor.’

As part of her job Lucy never stopped watching faces. Seeing the rapt attention of Flora, Chloe, Pushy, Hermione, Helen and even Tab, her heart sank. How stupid to think she had a hope against such dazzling competition. Lost as a star, when all the rest are shining in the sky, she thought sadly. As if to comfort her, James laid his long nose on her knee. At least she hadn’t had to go abroad this time and leave him behind.

In the flickering candlelight, Tristan’s face had lost its hollows and yellow-greyish pallor. His eyes glowed with conviction.

‘None of us is going to get him into bed,’ murmured Meredith to Baby. ‘Like Spielberg, he only fucks the movie.’

‘In real life Don Carlos was horrible person,’ Tristan was now telling his audience. ‘He roast animals alive, he gallop his horse to death, he assault and flog palace maids, he even bit the head off a pet lizard and ate it.’

‘Ooh,’ squealed Pushy.

‘I could have murdered a whole lizard at Champney’s last week,’ called out Baby.

‘You are very beautiful now, so it pay off,’ laughed Tristan, then serious again. ‘Tomorrow we begin filming the first act, which is perhaps the most tragic. Dusk is falling on a great forest. The huntsmen are riding home. Elisabetta and Carlos experience le coup de foudre, first love striking like lightning. They have few moments of ecstasy, thinking they will live happy for ever. Then it is over.’

Noticing the desolation on Tabitha’s face, he was ashamed to feel a flicker of satisfaction her marriage might not be working out. He had been haunted by dreams of her lean, jeaned body and garlanded head ever since the wedding.

After he’d wished everyone good luck for the morning, there was applause, coffee and liqueurs.

Down the table Hermione was telling Alpheus that Rannaldini often lent her his Gulf IV for overseas engagements. Why shouldn’t the Maestro do the same for his principal bass?

Misinterpreting the excitement on her lover’s face, Chloe tried once more to galvanize Wolfie. ‘Do you like opera?’ she asked.

‘I liked you in Nabucco,’ admitted Wolfie, ‘when the ENO brought it to Munich.’

‘It’s pronounced Na-book-o,’ snarled an eavesdropping Rannaldini.

I hate my father, thought Wolfie, I should never have come back. I hate Helen. She had always been a pain in the arse when her son Marcus and Wolfie had been at school together. And now she had put him back in his old room, which she’d obviously been using as a spare room, then expected him to rave over the chintz curtains and the flower paintings on the pretence she’d redecorated it especially for him.

I loathe Tabitha, he thought. She’s a spoilt brat, worse than Little Cosmo, more arrogant than her father, and now in possession of the nicest cottage on the estate. And there, laughing across the table with Chloe, was Flora, his old love, bloody gold-digger, covered in his father’s fingerprints, now shacked up with a guy as old as and probably richer than his father. He had forgiven neither her nor Rannaldini, and Flora, seeing the antagonism battling with the longing in Wolfie’s eyes, found it very disturbing. As solid as Tebaldo’s gun, she fingered the mobile in her jeans pocket, willing George to ring.

Rannaldini was now talking about Valhalla.

‘Part of the house is twelve century. It has been owned since the beginning by aristocrats or monks.’

‘Certainly by neither today,’ said Tabitha sourly, as she reached through the white daffodils for the Kummel.

‘Sometimes,’ Rannaldini ignored her, ‘on summer nights we ’ear the most beautiful plainsong from the chapel, but no-one is there. A sad, weeping lady in grey, Caroline Beddoes, is often seen gazing out of a blocked-up window on the north side. She has blood on her dress and a little dog in her arms. Sometime she glide through doors which exeest no longer. You can hear the hiss of her silk skirts on the flagstones.

‘And, of course, as in many great houses, there is a legend that when the lake dries up the head of the family will die.’

‘It looked promisingly low on the way down,’ murmured Baby.

Everyone laughed nervously, glancing furtively into the shadowy corners — except Alpheus.

‘Did you really manage to negotiate a cash settlement?’ he was asking Hermione.

‘Do you believe in ghosts, Sir Roberto?’ quavered Pushy.

The lights seemed to dim.

‘I believe, my dear,’ the excited throb in Rannaldini’s voice was growing more insistent, ‘in a great departure lounge crowded with spirits desperate to get to the next world or to return to this one, to avenge themselves or to clear their name or find a lost love.’

‘Attractive, isn’t he?’ whispered Chloe.

‘Satanically,’ shivered Flora.

‘Been to bed with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘So have I. Brilliant, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘We also have the legend of the Paradise Lad, a beautiful novice,’ Rannaldini’s eyes gleamed, ‘flogged to death by the monks for falling in love with a village girl. Sometime we hear him sobbing. Listen.’ As Rannaldini held up a white hand, a moan came from the chimney and everyone jumped in terror. ‘But it is probably only the wind.’

The port and brandy were orbiting like formula-one cars. Suddenly the door creaked slowly open. People screamed and clutched each other, as no-one entered. Then Rannaldini’s white cat, Sarastro, padded in.

‘It’s the night shift come to sit on Colin’s head,’ whispered Tabitha.

Next moment even she had jumped out of her skin, as Sarastro arched his back and hissed, his tail thick as a snow-covered Christmas tree. But he had only seen James, who would have given chase, if Lucy hadn’t grabbed his new green collar.

Helen was not happy. Tristan was perfectly charming but she wished he didn’t always want his crew to enjoy the same privileges as himself, when it meant her having on her left Ogborne, the pig-like chief grip whose shaved head was gleaming in the candlelight and who had just poured himself a third glass of port.

‘Got everything you need?’ she asked acidly.

‘Well, Cindy Crawford would be nice,’ said Ogborne, adding kindly, ‘but it’s been a great meal.’

‘Where does the name Valhalla come from?’ asked Pushy.

Helen opened her mouth. At last a chance to show off, but she was pre-empted by Ogborne.

‘Wagner,’ he told Pushy. ‘Valhalla was the palace built for the gods by the giants Fasolt and Fafner. You must remember that wonderful moment at the end of Rhinegold, when the gods pass over the rainbow bridge and enter the castle at sunset.’

The entire table fell silent, gazing at him in amazement.

‘And who’s that very handsome gentleman over the fireplace?’ simpered Pushy Galore.

‘She’s so far up Rannaldini,’ hissed Chloe, ‘one can’t see her toenails any more.’

‘That is my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side,’ said Rannaldini, smiling warmly at Pushy. ‘A tremendous rake. That portrait has been known to wink at very pretty girls.’

‘Bollocks,’ hiccuped Meredith. ‘You bought Great-great-grandpop and all your other ancestors in the King’s Road in the late eighties.’

Tristan tried not to laugh, and because Rannaldini had thrown Meredith such a filthy look and he didn’t want his entire crew and cast quitting Valhalla in terror, he got up to go.

‘Bedtime, everyone. Thank you, Rannaldini and Helen, for a wonderful evening. It has put us in great mood for tomorrow.’

Not all of us, thought Flora sadly, then squeaked in ecstasy as her mobile rang.

‘I’m in a seven-foot by seven-foot four-poster in Doosledorf,’ said a broad Yorkshire accent, ‘and I need soomeone to fill it.’

‘Oh, George,’ sighed Flora, ‘I love you so much and thank you for my lovely regard ring.’

Wolfie flinched.

‘OK for some,’ said Tab bitterly, then, pleadingly to Lucy, ‘Come back to the cottage for a quick one.’

‘Can I come too?’ asked Ogborne, picking up the bottle of Kummel.

‘No, you can’t,’ said Tab rudely.

Lucy sighed inwardly. ‘It’d better be quick — I’ve got to be up at six.’

Having made a few telephone calls, Rannaldini locked his study door, pressed a button and the bookshelf slid back to reveal a wall of monitors.

‘Two-way mirror on the wall,’ murmured Rannaldini, ‘who is the fairest of them all?’

Sadly, Tab had gone home. He must get Clive to install that video-camera in Magpie Cottage. Flora had pushed off to her parents’ house, Hermione to River House. But there was poor bald Colin, without his toupee, pacing his little cell, and Tristan had fallen asleep on his chessboard, clutching his mobile. Oscar was also asleep, Valentin calling his new wife.

Ah, that was more interesting. Pushy Galore going down on Sylvestre, and Ogborne snorting with delight over a porn mag. Wolfie lay on his back, smoking. Rannaldini had so often seen the same bruised furious reproach in Wolfie’s mother’s eyes. Of all of his wives, she had been the first and the worst treated. She had been so young. He must win Wolfie over. In the next cell, Baby was gazing at a photograph of someone suspiciously like Isa Lovell.

Pouring himself a brandy, Rannaldini sat back to watch Chloe and Alpheus but, despite Chloe’s ravishing body and flickering expertise, it was so mainline, he soon nodded off.

Even when she had tumbled into bed, long after midnight, Lucy couldn’t sleep. The house, like an ancient arthritic, kept shifting its position, creaking and groaning to get comfortable. The wind howled, the central heating gurgled, James was restless, and in the next room Colin Milton was so nervous they might get to the Spanish ambassador tomorrow, he spent all night practising his lines.

Lucy tried not to think about Tristan. For once she was glad when her alarm clock went off at five thirty.