“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing, darling? love, Granny.”’
After a long pause, this was greeted by screams of laughter.
‘Wonderful woman,’ said Eddie, who was trying to light a Gristik. ‘Propose to her every Christmas, know we’ll end up together.’
‘Sit down and shut up, Baby,’ called out Rannaldini, with a big pussy-cat smile. ‘I’m the one who’s making the speech.’
‘Helen’s not with us,’ called out Lady Chisledon.
Next moment, the mother of the bride came rushing in.
‘I cannot believe it. Someone has set fire to my fur hat. Tabitha!’ she rounded furiously on her daughter.
‘Must have been Lucy,’ said Tab, collapsing on to her husband’s knee. ‘She’s so anti people wearing fur.’
‘I never!’ stammered Lucy.
‘Sort it out later,’ said Rannaldini. ‘Sit down,’ he added chillingly.
Helen sat, red blotches of rage staining her neck.
‘Brilliant cake, Mrs Brimscombe,’ shouted Tab, taking a bite of Baby’s untouched piece.
Both Jake and Tory had looked at her in horror.
‘Spit it out,’ Tory wanted to shout, but it was too late.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began Rannaldini silkily, ‘it is with great pleasure…’
But for once he was talking to air as Rupert stalked in. He was wearing a crumpled lightweight suit and must have hitched a lift from Bogota on someone else’s jet.
‘Enter the Pin-up from Penscombe,’ whispered Meredith in ecstasy.
Aware that Rupert was the father of Xavier, whom he had bullied so dreadfully, Little Cosmo slid under the table.
‘Hello, Daddy,’ called out Tabitha.
For a second Rupert glared round, taking in first the bride, his daughter, on Isa’s knee, then his father, with his hand down Lady Chisledon’s shirt, and finally the bride’s stepmother, who was also his wife, cringing between Jake Lovell and a smirking Rannaldini. His fury was as blasting as nerve gas.
Only Hermione was unaffected. ‘Rupert Campbell-Black! Just in time for the dancing!’ she cried, charging him like an excited buffalo.
Stepping out of her way, Rupert chucked an envelope on the dark green tablecloth. Clive, who shadowed Rannaldini’s every move, was gliding in from the right.
‘Venturer are pulling out of
‘But you’re the chief backer,’ hissed Rannaldini, ‘and the contracts—’
‘Have not been signed,’ interrupted Rupert. ‘You should stop your Rottweiler lawyers being so greedy. And that’s only the opening shot, you poisoned dwarf.’
Then, totally ignoring a frantically mouthing Taggie, Rupert turned on his heel and stalked out.
‘Rupert Campbell-Black gets away with being rude because he’s very posh,’ announced the muffled voice of Little Cosmo.
‘Penis angelicus,’ sang Tabitha, and slid under the table to join him.
11
The following day Rannaldini, Tristan and Sexton, who’d been heartbroken not to be asked to the wedding, held an emergency meeting. Without Venturer’s millions the film was seriously in jeopardy. They couldn’t postpone because it was written into Alpheus’s contract that they would finish at the latest by the end of June. Sexton was particularly gutted: he had not only regarded Rupert as a terrific gent, who was shit-hot with money, but also as comfortingly much of a musical Philistine as he was himself.
Rannaldini was just sighing that he would love to help out financially but what with the wedding and tax bills looming… when Tristan took a deep breath — after all he had no dependants — and said as soon as the French lawyers stopped wrangling, Liberty Productions could have the bulk of the money Etienne had grudgingly left him. Then he suggested they economize by filming in modern dress, drawing parallels between the Spanish and the English royal families.
‘Grite, grite!’ cried Sexton in excitement. ‘Princess Di as Elisabetta — the Americans will go apeshit! And we can change Charles V’s ghost into the Queen Muvver.’
‘Don’t be fatuous, Sexton,’ snapped Rannaldini.
To Rannaldini’s delight, however, Tristan then proposed they film at Valhalla, which would be much cheaper. ‘You have mausoleum, dungeons, cloisters, and huge state rooms.’
‘And we can save on location fees, travel expenses and hotels by putting the cast up at Valhalla,’ said Rannaldini gleefully, envisaging unlimited extensions and redecorating on the budget. ‘Once recording’s over, we’ll recce Buckingham Palace to get the thing authentic.’
‘If the leaves are back on the trees by the time we start shooting,’ added Tristan, ‘we can always send a second unit to film the opening scenes in Romania where it’ll still be winter.’
‘Sounds expensive,’ said Rannaldini, not altogether playfully. ‘We’ll build in serious penalties if you don’t finish the movie on time.’
Meanwhile the cast were still not turning up at rehearsals but each night Tristan and Serena Westwood spent hours on the floor of Tristan’s flat, shuffling papers trying to schedule the recording. It was like wrestling with some massive seating plan, fitting in with singers’ availability and keeping the difficult ones apart.
‘Tricky when they’re
‘I suppose Rannaldini will have to turn up for the recording,’ said Tristan wearily.
Serena smirked because the Maestro was still finding time to take her to bed. But, to her irritation and despite heavy hints, Tristan still hadn’t made a move on her.
The recording itself was held in a huge assembly room attached to Wallsend Town Hall in north-east London. As the orchestra straggled in on the first day, in early January, the temperature plummeted below zero. Snow lay thickly over the regimented beds of wallflowers and pansies. Lengthening icicles glittered from the gutters in the morning sun. Inside the hall it was even colder: the central heating had been switched off in case gurgles and clicks were picked up on the tape.
‘It’s going to be breathe-in time for everyone,’ said a fat female member of the chorus, looking round the tiny gallery with disapproval. Down below technicians were trying to find room for all the orchestral chairs and music stands, and putting green bottles of water by every singer’s microphone.
The off-stage band had ill-advisedly been sent to play in the bar where an impromptu rehearsal for soloists, who had deigned to turn up, was also under way. Hearing screeching, Sexton, who was heroically trying to get into the jargon, remarked that Dame Hermione was ‘in fine voice’.
‘Chance would be a fine thing! That’s the chorus master,’ said Serena sourly.
‘Do you have a pass, sir?’ asked a man on the door, as Rannaldini stalked in, chocolate brown from skiing.
‘It’s Maestro Rannaldini!’ hissed the other doorman. ‘Where have you been? Outer space?’
Within seconds, Rannaldini was rowing with both Serena and Tristan, and changing everything. Half an hour later, Hermione swept in and started yelling that her dressing room was too small and too far from the stage, and she had nowhere to warm up.
‘How dare you send me yellow roses that are fully out when you know I only like buds?’ she then shouted at Christy Foxe, Serena’s PA, a little scrubbed-faced school-leaver, who had just staggered in with Hermione’s four suitcases. ‘And don’t forget I always have a glass of chilled champagne at eleven.’
‘No need to fucking chill it in
Rannaldini was now altering the schedule. No matter that the chorus, who had been booked for the day at vast expense, would be cooling their heels, he wished to kick off the recording with Hermione’s last duet with
