Score!

23

The first weeks of filming were very traumatic for Tristan, and his good nature, particularly when large crowds, horses and hounds were introduced, was severely tested.

Extras, as Sexton was fond of saying, are more expensive than lawyers. Tristan planned to use much of the chorus’s already recorded singing as voiceover, and when he employed actual crowds, to keep down the budget by packing as many of their scenes as possible into the same day.

One of his problems was that Sexton had advertised for extras in the Rutminster Echo, and the same lot rolled up for every crowd scene, whether as poverty-stricken woodmen and their wives or glamorous French courtiers and ladies-in-waiting or suave dark-eyed diplomats from the Spanish delegation.

This was particularly apparent because Pushy Galore, one of the few trained singers used as an extra, pushed her way to the front in every crowd scene.

If any of the extras managed to have a word with Tristan, they could claim they had ‘taken direction’ and charge for extra pay. If they were filmed beside any of the stars, this could be categorized as a ‘cameo appearance’ and they received double pay.

One of Wolfie’s most important jobs, therefore, was to keep the extras away from the cast, which was particularly difficult the day Hype-along invited down a reporter from The Times and was bunging anyone he could see to ask for Dame Hermione’s autograph.

This was after a most unfortunate piece had appeared in the Independent headlined ‘Dame Qui?’ saying none of the French crew had a clue who Hermione was. Poor Hype-along had had to rise at dawn and buy up every Independent on sale at the Paradise village shop before Hermione could send out for one.

It was even harder to keep the extras away from Tristan, who was so polite, whose head was so much in the clouds, and who was so horrified by the way Rannaldini was shattering everyone’s confidence that he’d speak to all and sundry just to reassure them they were doing brilliantly.

As well as bellowing through his loud-hailer to the extras to keep back, Wolfie had to tell them what expression — sad, shocked, deprived, happy — to use. Uninstructed extras always look like the village idiot. Every week, Sexton came down with money in a Gladstone bag, new readies for the extras, used readies for Hermione. Wolfie had to distribute these.

The extras made their first appearance at a stag hunt through snowy beechwoods. A very mettlesome stag had been hired, and Baby and Flora made jokes about fast bucks, particularly when the stag took off into the forest scattering rustics and was last seen chasing ghastly Percy the Parson, who’d got a thumping crush on Baby after hearing him sing at Tabitha’s wedding.

Griselda, the wardrobe mistress, massive in a mauve boiler-suit, was having even more of a nervous breakdown than usual. She had spent days amassing clothes for woodmen and foot-followers that were suitably bucolic. Rozzy Pringle, her new PA, had spent hours labelling them with each extra’s name and hanging them on clothes rails.

Alas, all the extras had lied about their neck size and ended up wearing collars so tight their eyes popped out, like an old Pekineses’ reunion.

Then Rannaldini started screaming that nobody looked dirty enough.

‘Thees ees not catwalk at Aquascutum fashion show.’

‘You OK’d those clothes yesterday,’ said Griselda, bursting into tears. ‘I hate extras,’ she sobbed. ‘Only ten per cent of the men wear underpants, and only five per cent of the women.’

‘Can you tell me which five, when you’ve got a second?’ asked Ogborne, his shaven head hidden in a blue wool flower-pot today, as he laid the tracks for the dolly on which the camera travelled down a different ride.

Lucy had loads more people to make up. The courtiers and huntsmen were fairly straightforward, but she had great difficulty with the chorus of poverty-stricken woodland folk, because none of them looked remotely undernourished.

She had even more of a problem keeping a straight face when Colin Milton, instead of removing his marmalade toupée to play the balding Spanish ambassador, insisted on hiding it under a bald skull-cap.

Flora — who as Hermione’s detective was meant to shadow her during the hunt — found singing while controlling a horse extremely difficult. Tab had grudgingly lent her The Engineer because she wanted her little grey horse to appear in the film. Unfortunately every time Wolfie, who was cantering around like a polo umpire, bellowed through his loud-hailer, The Engineer bolted. Yelling that she couldn’t afford to lose an Olympic horse, Tab finally insisted Flora switch to Wolfie’s old pony, Audrey. This triggered off a further screaming match with Simone, because it screwed up continuity, and with Wolfie, who didn’t want poor Audrey between Flora’s thighs.

Tab didn’t care. As mistress of the horse, her word was law. She had already tranked the delinquent Prince of Darkness, because Rannaldini wanted Hermione to ride him in the film.

‘Rather like a selling plate,’ grumbled Baby.

The Prince of Darkness was fine when he was galloping across country, but he lashed out at crowds, particularly at Pushy Galore, who had shoved her way to the front of the foot-followers. Pushy was livid and promptly reported the Prince and Tab to the union. This may have been due to jealousy.

Every time Tab appeared on the set, all one could see was technicians tripping over cables and camera tracks and cannoning into each other as they cricked their necks for a third and fourth glance. Even Oscar, the director of photography, woke up.

‘Talk about the return of Hale-Bopp,’ he sighed, as Tab and The Engineer flew past, blonde hair, grey mane and tail flying.

After Tab, the most eye-catching sight on the set was Hype-along Cassidy, the Press Officer, who had ginger sideboards and, even in winter, whisked about in flowered kipper ties and flared pastel suits. ‘Seventies is my trademark,’ he was always saying. ‘If you’re different you’re remembered.’

Hype-along knew more people than Griselda, but in twenty-five highly successful years he had never met a bunch whose vanity and caprice exceeded the cast of Don Carlos. Not only did they want coverage in the posh papers, but also double-page spreads in the tabloids praising their artistry but not mentioning their sex lives.

On the extras’ second day, Hype-along wheeled in the Sunday Express, whose photographer was having an adventurous time leaping out of the way of The Prince of Darkness and snapping the hunt as they streamed down a woodland ride.

‘So pleasant to have a break in Paradise,’ announced Hermione, slowing down to bow to the Express photographer as she and Colin Milton cantered decorously past. ‘It’s so peaceful here.’

Colin’s chestnut mare had furry legs like a feminist. It was lucky he was hanging on to her mane for grim death for next moment they were overtaken by a yelling peril.

‘Move it, you fuckers!’ shouted Tabitha. ‘You’re hunting, not pulling a coffin, and for God’s sake sit up, Grandma,’ she added to Hermione, ‘and shorten your reins.’

Hermione turned puce. ‘To think I sang at her wedding for nothing! I’m not surprised Isaac’s fed up with her already. I also think she’s been at the hip flask.’

Wolfie thought the same thing, and finding a half-empty bottle of vodka in the hollow of a large oak tree, emptied it on to the grass.

Tristan, meanwhile, knew exactly what space he wanted between horses and, in the politest possible way, made Hermione, Flora, Colin and the hunt return to their starting-point at the top of the ride again and again.

They were at last achieving a perfect take, galloping out of the wood with the sun shining and ivy glittering like chain-mail on the trees, when Tab came scorching across their bows, screaming, ‘Cut, cut, cut.’

Horses and riders slithered to a halt.

But before Tab could weigh into them in front of a flabbergasted crew, an outraged Tristan and an apoplectic Bernard, Wolfie had hurtled up, caught The Engineer’s reins and yanked him to a halt.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’

With his furious, flushed face, his gleaming blond hair, and his plunging horse, he looked just like St George. But his indigo eyes blazed like Rannaldini’s.

‘Hermione’s toes were pointing down like Darcey Bussell,’ yelled back Tab, ‘and Spanish ambassadors don’t cling on to their horses’ manes. And who let Hermione carry a hunting whip without a lash? It’s so naff. And if she wants to wear a red coat, why doesn’t she get a job at Butlin’s?’

‘You’ve just wrecked a perfectly good take!’

‘My reputation is at stake,’ countered Tab, who was getting thoroughly above herself. ‘If this goes on, I’ll have to take my name off the credits.’

‘After all your forty-eight-hour experience,’ said a scornful Wolfie, thinking how pale and unhealthy she looked in the spring sunshine. Then, seeing the first assistant director puffing up the hill, he added, ‘And you’ll bloody well apologize to Bernard.’

‘I will not, you bloody Alfred Hitler.’

‘Alfred?’ Wolfie raised an incredulous blond eyebrow.

Realizing she’d goofed, Tab had to recover herself. ‘Adolf’s much more evil elder brother,’ she said haughtily. ‘And don’t you dare take the piss out of me.’

‘Can we get on?’ said a chilling voice, which promptly sent the sun in.

It was Rannaldini.

‘You’re out of order, Wolfgang. Tabitha was quite right to halt the film. That whip’, he added bitchily, ‘is wrong. Hermione had a lash yesterday and The Prince of Darkness should be wearing my saddlecloth. Very black mark for continuity, Simone.’

‘Not if he’s being ridden by a French princess,’ said Wolfie defiantly. ‘Your saddlecloth incorporates the colours of the German and Italian flags,’ and swinging his horse round, he cantered off to tell the hunt to go back up the hill again.

How truly kind of Wolfie to defy his terrifying father for my sake, thought tiny Simone tearfully.

To avoid more chaos, Tristan filmed the hounds on a separate day. The Cotchester Hunt, pulled out by Rupert, had been replaced by a splendidly sixteenth-century assortment of wolfhounds, greyhounds, salukis and lurchers. But being gaze hounds, who chased what they saw rather than what they smelled, they ignored the extra, drenched in aniseed, who’d replaced the stag, and tore instead after the camera moving on its dolly. Soon Ogborne, clutching his flower-pot hat, Valentin, in his new English brogues, and Oscar, who’d nodded off against a copper beech, could be seen belting off into the wood in terror.

James the lurcher, who’d been signed up as a hound, immediately rushed back to Lucy, where the other Valhalla dogs, Sharon, Trevor and Tabloid, Rannaldini’s Rottweiler, who’d all ploughed the audition, proceeded to rubbish him out of jealousy.

‘Cut down the tallest puppy,’ said Flora, who was in such hysterics, she fell off Audrey.

Despite the traumas, wonderful work was being done. Hermione’s long, one-noted ‘Yes’, when she agreed to marry Philip rather than Carlos, had everyone in tears. And at the end of two and a half weeks, the first, and probably most taxing, act was in the can, the buds could feel free to burst open in Cathedral Close, and the wild flowers to throw off their blanket of artificial snow.

Action would now move inside to the dungeons and to Alpheus’s bedroom scene. Alpheus, Granny, Chloe, Hermione, Mikhail and Baby would be needed, but no horses or Flora, so she and Tabitha could have a break.

But there was no respite for Lucy. Her make-up had been inspired, except when Tristan popped into her caravan and her hands started shaking. When he watched the rushes, he realized even more what a treasure he had found. Flora with her short back and sides looked disturbingly androgynous. With miraculous shading, Baby had lost all his puppy fat — he was also acting everyone off the screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off him.

The only person not ravished by the rushes was Hermione. She was in the habit of pestering her agent, Howie Denston, twenty times a day, even ordering him to ring up and tell her chauffeur to turn down the car radio when she was being driven the half-mile from River House to Valhalla.

Now she told Howie to tell Tristan she could only film in the afternoons, when her big brown eyes were fully open. She also sacked her make-up artist and insisted on having Lucy.

Lucy was then summoned to Hermione’s caravan for a glass of very cheap South African sherry as the great diva lay stretched out on a bed, a pad steeped in witch-hazel over her eyes.

‘As I’m playing a beautiful young princess in this film,’ announced Hermione, ‘I thought it fitting at first to employ a beautiful young make-up artist, who would be au fait with the latest trends. While you’re here, Lucy dear, could you peel those grapes, and pop them into my mouth? Now I realize I was wrong.’ Hermione sounded as though she was going over to Rome. ‘Far better to go for a mature, older woman, like yourself, who knows the ropes. You mustn’t be fazed, Lucy. I have every faith in you.’

‘I wanted to ram her bloody grapes down her throat,’ Lucy told Tristan afterwards.

Although he was cross, Tristan was ecstatic Lucy could now feed his ideas into Hermione’s thick skull. But realizing Lucy never finished clearing up and doing her paperwork before midnight, he promised her more help — perhaps Rozzy from Wardrobe.

‘And you need more light in here.’

Lucy was so touched he’d noticed she’d have made up the entire crew. Griselda, however, was livid. Rozzy was the best assistant she’d ever had: she was determined to hang on to her.

Wolfie was also proving a great asset, checking Oscar’s cigars were lit and that Tristan didn’t lose his camera script. And if he found Bernard ugly and uncharming, he didn’t mob him up like the others. Having been brought up with artists, Wolfie was quite used to them losing their head and their nerve several times a day, and somehow managed to get everyone — except Hermione — out of their dressing rooms on time. Outwardly, however, he appeared terribly arrogant.

The crew, resenting this, pinned a notice saying ‘Stalag Studios’ on Wolfie’s door and whistled ‘The Dambusters’ every time he walked past. Ogborne and three of the sparks had too much to drink one lunchtime and proceeded to circle the production office, where Wolfie was wrestling with the next day’s call sheet. Sticking their arms out, they pretended to be Lancasters and lobbed Scotch eggs through the window.

Wolfie ignored them, but later that evening Tristan found him gazing miserably into space. He knew Wolfie’s arrogance was a defence mechanism, and that beneath his reserve he was warm-hearted and thoughtful. It had been Wolfie who had told Tristan Lucy needed more light.

Tristan had also noticed the anguish Wolfie couldn’t hide when an ecstatic Flora, baseball cap tugged over her short back and sides, had flown off to join George that morning.

Tristan was a workaholic but, for once, he abandoned his storyboards and bore Wolfie off to dinner at the Old Bell in Rutminster. Wolfie had always been jealous of Tristan because Rannaldini had such a high regard for him but now, over several bottles, they discussed Schiller, horrendously competitive fathers and, inevitably, the cast.

As they walked back unsteadily from the Valhalla car park, across the valley, a light like a low bright star was shining in Magpie Cottage.

‘You could loosen up with Tabitha,’ said Tristan idly.

‘She’s appalling,’ said Wolfie bleakly. ‘The most awful human being I’ve ever met.’

‘The wicked stepsister.’ Tristan smiled in the darkness. ‘And you could stop bitching up Flora.’

‘I made love to Flora in every inch of this park,’ said Wolfie. His face was in shadow, but his voice was raw with pain. ‘The night I took her to the school dance, my father landed his helicopter on the cricket pitch, and Flora disappeared into it like Close Encounters. I left home the next morning or I’d have murdered him. And how can she live with that thug George Hungerford? He’s knocked down more buildings in Dresden than Winston Churchill.’

As they wandered past the north wing Tristan noticed, with a sinking heart, the curtains moving in Bernard’s still-lit window. If Bernard felt he was being usurped as Tristan’s confidant he would give Wolfie a hard time.