27


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 the 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.

Tabitha, cuddling Sharon on the sofa, was wearing a pale green vest, a bikini bottom, dirty gym shoes and was watching racing on television with the sound turned down. Her face was deathly white, except for her reddened eyes, but nothing could take away the beauty of her long pale legs.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

Sharon, who had better manners, jumped down and brought Wolfie a small rug, revealing a pile of dust. Wolfie handed Tab her bag.

‘I brought this back.’

‘Thanks.’ Staggering to her feet, kicking an empty half-bottle of vodka under the sofa, antagonism fighting with loneliness in her eyes, Tab asked him if he’d like a cup of tea.

Wolfie followed her into the kitchen and nearly fainted.

‘I’m sorry.’ Tab smashed a cup, as she tried to get the kettle under the tap in a hopelessly overcrowded sink. ‘I only tidy up before Isa comes back.’

She had cut herself on the cup. Tugging off a piece of kitchen roll, Wolfie wrapped it round her finger, then started to load the contents of the sink, mostly glasses, into the dishwasher, which was empty except for a shoal of silver on the bottom.

‘How’s your marriage?’ he asked.

‘A bed of roses.’

Wolfie looked sceptical.

‘With the thorns sticking upwards,’ said Tab.

‘You could stop drinking.’

‘I don’t drink at all, I’ve given up.’

‘What’s this, then?’ Wolfie produced the Evian bottle out of her bag.

Tab brightened. ‘I’d forgotten that. I think we’re out of tea-bags.’ Fretfully she opened a cupboard and a lot of pasta packets descended on her head. ‘Oh, Christ, we’d better have a slug of that instead.’

But before she could grab the Evian bottle, Wolfie had emptied it into the sink.

‘Whydya want to waste perfectly good alcohol?’ screamed Tab. ‘Now what am I going to do?’

‘Go to AA.’

‘One is supposed to meet rather nice men there. I might find a new husband.’

‘I’ll take you along. There must be a Rutminster branch. I’ll check out the time of the next meeting.’

‘Just stop it,’ Tab flared up again.

Hearing a patter on the trees outside, Wolfie glanced across the valley at tassels of rain hanging from the clouds. They wouldn’t be shooting for a bit.

Why had she been so upset at lunchtime? he asked, knowing the answer, but feeling she needed to talk.

‘It reminded me of my own baby,’ muttered Tab. ‘Isa won’t discuss it — won’t really discuss anything. Then I got a letter from Mummy this morning, raving about my brother Marcus’s recital in Moscow. And how charming Alexei, Marcus’s lover, was being. I bet she drives him crackers, and the mean old cow’s locked her bedroom door so I can’t help myself to her stuff.’

Wolfie laughed but, noticing Tab shivering, unearthed a bottle of orange squash, poured an inch into a mug and switched on the kettle as she talked.

‘Even if everyone else thought I was a nightmare,’ Tab was saying, ‘I was always convinced I could whistle Daddy back. Marrying Isa was the easiest way to hurt him. Christ, I need a drink.’

Wolfie poured the boiling water on to the orange squash.

‘Have this instead.’

‘And another thing,’ Tab was pacing round the kitchen, ‘everyone cooing over the photograph of that baby reminded me how jealous and awful I was when my stepsister Perdita arrived, and even worse when Daddy and Taggie adopted Xav and Bianca. I tried to be good, but I wasn’t.’

As she hung her blonde head, she reminded Wolfie of the cowslips fading in the valley.

‘So did I,’ he said roughly. ‘I was Papa’s first child, and now I have seven stepbrothers and sisters, not to mention Little Cosmo, and a pack of illegits, and I wanted to kill each one when it arrived. I remember thinking, When will Papa ever have the tiniest bit of love or time left for me?’

‘You do make me feel better,’ sighed Tab. ‘If Mummy suddenly gets pregnant we can drown our sorrows.’

As she took a sip of orange squash listlessly, Wolfie noticed how thin her arms were. ‘When did you last eat?’

‘Dunno.’

The telephone rang.

‘You answer it.’ Tab led him back into the sitting room.

If it were Isa, it might make him sit up, but it was Bernard breathing fire.

‘Gotta go,’ said Wolfie, putting down the receiver, then blushing. ‘Would you like to have dinner tonight?’

‘Men don’t ask me out.’

For a second Wolfie thought Tab was going to cry.

‘You’re like a very rare and beautiful orchid,’ he stammered. ‘People feel they ought not to pick you.’

‘That’s nice.’ For a second Tab examined Wolfie’s dark blue eyes, matching his polo shirt, his square-jawed, slightly old-fashioned Action Man features, his reddish complexion turning brown. He would make a good, dependable friend.

‘I’d like to,’ she said.

‘I’ll take you to Shako’s.’

‘We’d never get in.’

‘Wanna bet? There are advantages in having a famous surname. We can take your dustbins to the tip on the way.’

‘Oh look! There’s Daddy.’

Tab lurched towards the television, turning up the sound and fingering her father’s face. Wolfie and he were both tall and blond but it was like comparing a cob with a thoroughbred.

Rupert had just paid seventy-five thousand to make a late entry in the Derby.

‘That’s a lot of money,’ John Oaksey was saying. ‘You must be sure Peppy Koala’ll do well.’

‘Very,’ said Rupert.

‘Oh, my God.’ Tabitha had turned as pale green as her vest. ‘If Peppy Koala wins, Isa will murder me.’

She rang at nine o’clock just as Wolfie was leaving Valhalla, her voice slurred.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t make it.’

‘Course you can, I’ve already left.’

The heatwave chugged on. Between filming, people played croquet and tennis, swam in Rannaldini’s beautiful pool, got lost in the maze and helped Granny knit squares of his patchwork quilt. The hawk-eyed Simone went round routing out sunbathers because a tan screwed up continuity. Rozzy watered dying plants, sewed thousands of seed pearls on an ivory satin dress for Hermione to wear at Philip II’s coronation and kept wonderfully cheerful.

Dr James Benson had been so kind to her, she told Lucy with passionate gratitude. He was such an attractive, sympathetic man. Whenever Rozzy had to disappear for treatment, Lucy covered up for her, explaining she’d had to rush home to deal with some domestic problems. Lucy spent much of her spare time surreptitiously making Rozzy a wig.

As befitting an international maestro, Rannaldini jetted in and out criticizing everything and everyone, slowing down filming, when it was already disastrously behind schedule, and sending costs spiralling. Rumours of the runaway budget were sweeping Europe and Hollywood. Tristan had already ploughed in five million and seen it vanish, mostly in Meredith’s decorating costs. It was as though Rannaldini had thrown petrol over the notes and set fire to them. But Tristan couldn’t stop to worry about money: finishing the film was all that mattered.

Alpheus, too, was making no attempt to keep down the budget. Having finally screwed a Jaguar out of Sexton, he now wanted a runaround for Cheryl.

‘He’s already giving her the runaround,’ observed Baby, as every day, wearing face masks, Alpheus and Pushy jogged bouncily off into the yellowing park.

Poor Cheryl spent a lot of time spying up trees and was mistaken for a member of the press by Mr Brimscombe, who removed her ladder to much squawking.

Hermione insisted on her limo to and from River House being on permanent standby. She also demanded unlimited champagne, and fresh flowers each day, both in her caravan and on her sunhat. She still thought Sexton was a nasty, common little man for curbing her expenses — everyone knew caviare, like seminal fluid, was good for the vocal cords.

Nor was Sexton setting a very good example. His worries about the budget had not deterred him from employing a ravishing new production secretary called Jessica, on the flimsy grounds that her telephone manner kept the backers sweet. Clearly she had not been hired for her typing. Copies of her first memo from Sexton — ‘Please will all the cast assemble for a publicity shit in the Great Hall at twelve moon’ — were already circulating the unit.


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