Score!

forgetting his lines and then had a nervous breakdown. He’s playing the Spanish ambassador. He’s really sweet.’

Meanwhile, anxious to make Alpheus jealous, Chloe was chatting up Wolfgang and, to prove she was not just a pretty face, discussing Schiller.

‘In the play,’ she said, ‘Philip offers his mistress, Eboli, in marriage to a disgusting old courtier.’

‘He also offers Carlos up to the Inquisition,’ said Wolfgang bleakly, ‘because both his mistress and his wife are in love with Carlos. His religion gave Philip a marvellous excuse to murder a son he hated.’

Wow, thought Chloe, you’re a chilly boy, ruthless as your dad. The combination of blond, chiselled, Luftwaffe-pilot looks with Rannaldini’s night-dark eyes was very disturbing.

‘Oh, goodee!’ Hermione clapped her hands. ‘Here’s Alpheus.’

Alpheus, who had deliberately arrived late to make an entrance, looked splendid, deeply tanned, wearing a frilly cream shirt tucked into dark blue velvet trousers to show off his T-bone figure. Helen’s eyes widened with excitement as he kissed her hand.

‘Here comes the Lothario from Long Island,’ said Baby sourly.

‘He is handsome,’ reproached Flora.

‘Like a lobster,’ snapped Baby. ‘Tasty body, but a head full of shit.’

‘Dinner is served,’ grumbled Mr Brimscombe, the gardener, who was violently opposed to Rannaldini’s plan to obliterate his flower-beds in a great Buckingham Palace sweep of lawn down to the lake, and who had only agreed to butle because so much crumpet was on view.

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 consomme, 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 puree.

‘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 Chateau 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?