Score!

‘He owes the Germans about forty million in bridging loans. If it were me I’d never sleep again. If I’d taken the part I could have helped out with a few bills, but truly I’m too fat. I’ve got a treble chin, although most trebles don’t have chins like mine.’

Tristan laughed. He thought Flora utterly ravishing and said there would be masses of time for her to lose any weight before filming started at the end of March.

‘But I haven’t got page’s legs.’

‘As it’s in modern dress, Tebaldo’s become one of those handsome detectives Princess Diana and Princess Anne seemed to get so close to. So your perfectly OK legs will be hidden by trousers.’

‘But the main drawback,’ went on Flora, ‘God, I hope this room isn’t bugged, is working with Rannaldini. George is insanely jealous and has never forgiven Rannaldini for beating me up and trying to rape me last August. I promise you it’s true,’ she added, seeing Tristan’s look of horror. ‘Rannaldini wanted me to stay the night with him after singing in The Creation but I bolted back to George.’

Then, after a large glass of Armagnac, she said, ‘I’ll do it, if George says it’s OK and if I can bring Trevor. Perhaps he could wear lifts and audition for one of Philip II’s wolfhounds.’

Trevor wagged his stumpy tail approvingly.

As soon as Tristan left, Flora rang Germany. George was dreadfully torn. He felt sick at the thought of Flora working with Rannaldini again and neither did he want her anywhere near that impossibly glamorous Tristan de Montigny, exuding cross-Channel pheromones. But he couldn’t stand in her way.

‘You’d never forgive me or yourself if you turned down the break of a lifetime.’

‘You’re the break of my lifetime,’ sobbed Flora, who half wanted George to forbid her. ‘Nothing will ever be as wonderful as falling in love with you.’

The moment she rang off George regretted it. Flora would have other chances and he didn’t trust Rannaldini. But when he rang back the number was engaged, even though it was two o’clock in the morning. She was obviously speaking to Tristan, accepting the part. George only just stopped himself ringing all the other numbers in the house.

Three hours later, Flora was slumped at the kitchen table, finishing Don Carlos and a large tub of banana and yoghurt ice cream, when she saw more fireflies dancing in the window.

Having made a detour to the other side of Rutminster to drop some Roman coins into the excavations of a rival, to prevent him getting planning permission from English Heritage, George had landed his helicopter outside the kitchen.

As Flora, followed by a sleepy Trevor, ran across the snowy lawn into his arms, George said, ‘I’ve got a meeting at nine in Dusseldorf, I can only stay an hour.’

‘Let’s spend every second of it in bed,’ said Flora, dragging him upstairs.

In fact, George was angelic. A fine bass himself, he returned the following evening to help her learn the part.

Flora also received a call from Sexton.

‘We’re writing into your contract a clause to say you mustn’t fall pregnant before the end of filming. Can’t ’ave a private dick in the club.’

15

Before her first recording Flora spent the night with Abby and Viking, who had practically to drug and drag her screaming into his car to get her to Wallsend Town Hall, which had grown even colder, the icicles outside even longer. The red-nosed chorus, in their overcoats, looked like carol singers.

Flora was supposed to take over where Rozzy had not started: in the Forest of Fontainebleau with Hermione and Baby, but as a dreadful anticlimax, Hermione had just rung in for the second day running saying that the broken toe she’d sustained in her collision with Alpheus was much worse.

Tristan was so angry for Flora that he drove much too fast over icy roads back into London to the Lanesborough. Thundering on the door of Hermione’s suite he was admitted by her excited PA. Hearing shrieks of agony, he thought he had misjudged his leading lady, but barging into her bedroom, found her having her legs waxed. To Hermione’s fury, he immediately insisted she and one hairy leg return with him to Wallsend.

Flora, meanwhile, had been immensely comforted to find a good-luck card in her dressing room from Serena’s new PA, Rozzy Pringle. She was attempting to get her trembling lips round a few arpeggios, when Rozzy herself rushed in with a mug of hot Ribena.

‘Hello, my poor lamb, you mustn’t be frightened. You’ve got such a lovely voice. I’ve studied the role so if you need any help… I have to confess,’ Rozzy went on, as she hung Flora’s blue scarf on a hanger, ‘I was prepared to hate you because my husband, Glyn, is so in love with your mother, he’s got all her records.’

‘I’ll get him an advance copy of her next album,’ promised Flora. ‘We’re all huge fans of yours.’

‘Come and meet Granville Hastings,’ said Rozzy. ‘He’s such a darling.’

‘Why are there so many people here?’ muttered an aghast Flora.

‘You’ve turned up on the worst possible day,’ whispered back Rozzy indignantly. ‘By constantly ignoring poor Tristan’s schedule and pulling out people to sing as and when he felt like it, Rannaldini’s created the most appalling backlog. All the rest of the cast are here in case they have to do retakes. Poor Tristan!’

They found Granny regaling an audience with chitchat.

‘My dear child, welcome.’ He put down his knitting to give Flora a kiss.

‘Where the hell’s Rannaldini?’ Even the normally ebullient Baby was uptight over all the hanging around.

‘Having a poke, I expect,’ sighed Granny. ‘He always poked the prettiest chorus girls at the Garden, bending them over the red velvet balcony of the royal box between rehearsals. If anyone came by, he used to pretend he was showing them round the opera-house.’

Granny rose, still knitting, and went into a sequence of languid pelvic thrusts. ‘Down there ees the peet, where my orchestra play [thrust], and zat is rostrum where I perform miracle [thrust], and zat is proscenium arch [thrust].’

‘When you ’ave feenish, Granville,’ said a chilling voice.

The laughter died. Granny dropped several stitches.

‘Dame ’Ermione soldier in. At least ’ave the courtesy not to keep her waiting.’ Rannaldini glared round.

‘Anyone got a Fisherman’s Friend?’ came Hermione’s pathetic bleat.

Limping ostentatiously, she joined Baby and Flora on the platform.

‘Just like the Teddy Bears’ Picnic,’ hissed Flora, glaring at Hermione’s full-length mink.

‘I assure you, this will be no picnic,’ hissed back Baby.

Rannaldini just had to stand there. His cruel, cold, pale, malevolent face was enough to give a performance its special edge. He raised his stick. Viking’s dying horn call floated out of the bar.

Flora was so terrified she began loud and sharp. It didn’t take Rannaldini long to put the boot in. After the fifth take, when she’d finally got the notes right, he said, ‘That was better, Flora, but you are expected to act.’

Flora flushed. ‘But I thought—’

‘Don’t,’ said Rannaldini crushingly. ‘You do not have the necessary equipment,’ he added bitchily. ‘To be a singer you have to have a voice. To be a musician you have to have a brain. Don’t confuse the two.’

There is a limited number of times you can ask a singer to repeat herself and get the words, notes and acting right. Rannaldini exceeded it. Flora was also slimming, and the rare perfect take was invariably wrecked by her rumbling tummy.

‘This is hopeless,’ yelled Rannaldini, calling a lunch break. ‘We will finish scene tomorrow.’

The last day was even more tempestuous, particularly when George Hungerford rolled up with Trevor, Flora’s terrier, and sat at the back of the hall scowling at Rannaldini. Flora got even more flustered, particularly when Trevor started howling at Hermione’s rather dubious top notes, which reduced both chorus and cast to fits of laughter, so master and dog were banished from the hall.