Score!

22

From six o’clock onwards a mighty army of lorries, caravans, a canteen, generators, double-decker dining- buses and a Portaloo euphemistically nicknamed the honeywagon rumbled eastwards into Rannaldini’s woods. Their destination was a beechwood known as Cathedral Copse, because its silver trunks soared to the sky like the pillars of a huge nave.

It was a bitterly cold day. In a clearing Oscar, the director of photography, his purple scarf and dark hair flapping, was eating a bacon sandwich, glancing from shivering stand-ins to light meters, and briefing the gaffer, the chief electrician, who in turn told his minions, the sparks, where to put the lights. Except in the place where the singers were going to act, the carpet of faded beech leaves was criss-crossed with camera tracks and cables and teeming with focus-pullers measuring distances, boom operators, and props men trying to look useful.

Over in Make Up, Lucy had grabbed a cup of coffee and a hot dog for James before starting on the long haul of making up Baby, who needed Alka-Seltzer, lots of blue eye-drops, concealer for his dark shadows and blusher for his blanched cheeks.

‘You’ve got such a beautiful face,’ chided Lucy. ‘You should cut out the booze and get a few early nights.’

‘Carlos is supposed to look pale and wan.’

‘Not in this scene. That comes after his dad’s nicked his girlfriend.’

‘How’s Mrs Lovell’s marriage?’

‘Fine.’ Lucy drew a white line inside Baby’s lower lashes to reduce the redness.

‘Yeah, yeah, Rannaldini’s won a peace prize. Is Isa catting around?’

‘You should know. You’re his friend.’

‘He’s not the greatest communicator, except with horses.’

‘Aren’t you nervous?’ asked Lucy, who was accustomed to calming terrified actors, particularly on the first day.

‘Not in the least. Don’t change the subject. You went back to Magpie Cottage — she must have said something. She was certainly on the pull last night, flashing her sea-horse tattoo.’

‘She dressed up because she thought Isa was coming with her. I don’t want to discuss it. Now, what are we going to do about your green tongue? Here’s a pink cough pastille, if you can keep it down.’

Next she had to cope with a sobbing Flora, clutching a furiously yapping Trevor with one hand and tugging her red hair down over her ears with the other.

Whereas make-up artists usually adjust to their subject’s wishes, film hairdressers tend to impose their views on others. Flora had got stuck into the tattered remains of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin only to discover she’d been given a short back and sides.

‘George will sling me out. Oh, for God’s sake, stop it, Trevor!’ Flora’s voice rose to a scream as the little terrier lunged at a surprised James.

‘You can get away with it, you’ve got such a lovely face.’ Lucy tied a powder-blue overall round Flora’s neck. ‘And it’ll soon grow.’

‘Not for three months, it won’t,’ mocked Baby. ‘That gauleiter Simone from Continuity won’t allow it, and Lucy said I’ve got a beautiful face too. She says it to all the girls.’

‘Oh, go away and annoy Wardrobe,’ said Lucy, throwing a sponge at him.

‘I shall go and inhabit my caravan. Look, it’s on the call sheet — “Mr Spinosissimo’s caravan”. It’s eight inches longer than Hermione’s, I measured it — so yah, boo!’

Lucy then had to turn a quaking Flora into Hermione’s private detective, thickening her eyebrows, giving her sideboards and a small moustache, and creating brown stubble with a dry sponge.

‘I’m bored in my caravan. It’s lonely being a mega-star,’ said Baby, half an hour later. He was so turned on by Flora’s new butch look, he couldn’t stop pinching her bottom.

‘You’re wanted in Wardrobe, Mr Spinosissimo.’ Standing in the doorway, his shoulders broadened by a lumber jacket, was a stony-faced Wolfie. ‘Get your ass into gear, the director’s waiting.’

‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen. Heil Hitler.’ Baby goosestepped after Wolfgang. ‘Christ, it’s cold. If March is meant to go out like a lamb, this one’s New Zealand and deep-frozen.’

Over at Wardrobe, Tristan and Lady Griselda, in a floor-length fur-lined red coat and a fake-fur hat like a tsar, had decided that as Carlos had just flown into France incognito, it would be more appropriate for him to lurk at the meet in a covert coat.

‘Wouldn’t a flasher’s mac be more suitable?’ said Baby.

He was still violently opposed to his Prince Charles wig and enraged Tristan by asking the grinning crew whether he looked a prat or not. When they voted by a show of hands that he did, he tore it off and threw it into a bramble bush.

Tristan only gave in because he and Rannaldini, who’d just rolled up in his huge wolf coat, had been sucked into an even worse screaming match with Meredith, who didn’t appear quite so young and boyish out of doors. The point of contention was a hunting lodge, which looked as though it had been exclusively decorated by Colefax & Fowler.

‘We are not making fourth-rate production of Hansel and Gretel,’ snarled Rannaldini, whose idea it had actually been because he wanted a free summerhouse, but who hadn’t forgiven Meredith for last night’s bought ancestors.

‘Carlos and Lizzie have a love tryst in it,’ Meredith stamped his little snow boot, ‘so it must look nice.’

‘We should have seen a model first,’ said Tristan reasonably.

‘It look like cuckoo clock,’ hissed Rannaldini.

Meredith flounced off, muttering that his artistic input had been compromised. The cuckoo clock was banished and stood sulking near the car park for the rest of the shoot.

Because Hermione was still squawking in Make Up it was decided quickly to relight and shoot the first four lines of Baby’s aria, when he expresses rapture after catching his first glimpse of Elisabetta.

There was already a crimson blur of new bud on the beeches. Bluebell leaves and green flames of wild garlic were pushing through the leaf mould. But such signs of spring were speedily blotted out by the snow machine scattering white foam everywhere, even between the cracks in the dry ground.

‘Remember not to bang your chest. It sound like Beeg Ben,’ begged Sylvestre as he miked up Baby.

Next moment, everyone jumped out of their skins, as music poured fortissimo out of speakers hidden behind two venerable sycamores.

‘Doesn’t it sound gorgeous?’ cried Flora, rushing out of Make Up, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Rannaldini’s overture is simply sensational. You’d never know it wasn’t Verdi.’

‘You always admired him,’ said Wolfie coldly.

Flora flushed. Next moment she had tripped over a sign concealed by the snow saying ‘Beware of Snakes’.

‘Oh, God,’ she wailed. ‘Trevor and I are going to invest in some thigh boots before summer.’

Meanwhile, Hype-along Cassidy, the harassed press officer, who was expecting a reporter and photographer from the Independent, was sidling from one bewildered member of the French crew to another, imploring them to charge forward and ask for Dame Hermione’s autograph when she deigned eventually to come out of her caravan.

‘Bruce Willis’s press officer does the same thing,’ he lied.

Tristan was taking Baby through a quick rehearsal. Valentin, Oscar’s handsome son-in-law, perched on a little chair behind the camera, was following them, as Ogborne, a red knitted flower-pot covering his shaved head, pushed the camera along the silver rail tracks.

As the head of Props pressed a button, and the smoke-machine enveloped Baby in swirling grey mist, Lucy shot forward with her brushes to take the shine off his nose, and a hairdresser rearranged his curls.