Score!

But there was no respite for Lucy. Her make-up had been inspired, except when Tristan popped into her caravan and her hands started shaking. When he watched the rushes, he realized even more what a treasure he had found. Flora with her short back and sides looked disturbingly androgynous. With miraculous shading, Baby had lost all his puppy fat — he was also acting everyone off the screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off him.

The only person not ravished by the rushes was Hermione. She was in the habit of pestering her agent, Howie Denston, twenty times a day, even ordering him to ring up and tell her chauffeur to turn down the car radio when she was being driven the half-mile from River House to Valhalla.

Now she told Howie to tell Tristan she could only film in the afternoons, when her big brown eyes were fully open. She also sacked her make-up artist and insisted on having Lucy.

Lucy was then summoned to Hermione’s caravan for a glass of very cheap South African sherry as the great diva lay stretched out on a bed, a pad steeped in witch-hazel over her eyes.

‘As I’m playing a beautiful young princess in this film,’ announced Hermione, ‘I thought it fitting at first to employ a beautiful young make-up artist, who would be au fait with the latest trends. While you’re here, Lucy dear, could you peel those grapes, and pop them into my mouth? Now I realize I was wrong.’ Hermione sounded as though she was going over to Rome. ‘Far better to go for a mature, older woman, like yourself, who knows the ropes. You mustn’t be fazed, Lucy. I have every faith in you.’

‘I wanted to ram her bloody grapes down her throat,’ Lucy told Tristan afterwards.

Although he was cross, Tristan was ecstatic Lucy could now feed his ideas into Hermione’s thick skull. But realizing Lucy never finished clearing up and doing her paperwork before midnight, he promised her more help — perhaps Rozzy from Wardrobe.

‘And you need more light in here.’

Lucy was so touched he’d noticed she’d have made up the entire crew. Griselda, however, was livid. Rozzy was the best assistant she’d ever had: she was determined to hang on to her.

Wolfie was also proving a great asset, checking Oscar’s cigars were lit and that Tristan didn’t lose his camera script. And if he found Bernard ugly and uncharming, he didn’t mob him up like the others. Having been brought up with artists, Wolfie was quite used to them losing their head and their nerve several times a day, and somehow managed to get everyone — except Hermione — out of their dressing rooms on time. Outwardly, however, he appeared terribly arrogant.

The crew, resenting this, pinned a notice saying ‘Stalag Studios’ on Wolfie’s door and whistled ‘The Dambusters’ every time he walked past. Ogborne and three of the sparks had too much to drink one lunchtime and proceeded to circle the production office, where Wolfie was wrestling with the next day’s call sheet. Sticking their arms out, they pretended to be Lancasters and lobbed Scotch eggs through the window.

Wolfie ignored them, but later that evening Tristan found him gazing miserably into space. He knew Wolfie’s arrogance was a defence mechanism, and that beneath his reserve he was warm-hearted and thoughtful. It had been Wolfie who had told Tristan Lucy needed more light.

Tristan had also noticed the anguish Wolfie couldn’t hide when an ecstatic Flora, baseball cap tugged over her short back and sides, had flown off to join George that morning.

Tristan was a workaholic but, for once, he abandoned his storyboards and bore Wolfie off to dinner at the Old Bell in Rutminster. Wolfie had always been jealous of Tristan because Rannaldini had such a high regard for him but now, over several bottles, they discussed Schiller, horrendously competitive fathers and, inevitably, the cast.

As they walked back unsteadily from the Valhalla car park, across the valley, a light like a low bright star was shining in Magpie Cottage.

‘You could loosen up with Tabitha,’ said Tristan idly.

‘She’s appalling,’ said Wolfie bleakly. ‘The most awful human being I’ve ever met.’

‘The wicked stepsister.’ Tristan smiled in the darkness. ‘And you could stop bitching up Flora.’

‘I made love to Flora in every inch of this park,’ said Wolfie. His face was in shadow, but his voice was raw with pain. ‘The night I took her to the school dance, my father landed his helicopter on the cricket pitch, and Flora disappeared into it like Close Encounters. I left home the next morning or I’d have murdered him. And how can she live with that thug George Hungerford? He’s knocked down more buildings in Dresden than Winston Churchill.’

As they wandered past the north wing Tristan noticed, with a sinking heart, the curtains moving in Bernard’s still-lit window. If Bernard felt he was being usurped as Tristan’s confidant he would give Wolfie a hard time.

24

Next day Rannaldini pushed off to New York for a week and, heaving a sigh of relief, Tristan decided to kick off indoor filming with Posa’s moving death scene in the dungeons. This was scuppered by Mikhail missing the plane from Moscow. So Tristan switched to a later scene, in which Carlos and Philip are joined by Eboli and the Grand Inquisitor, with the Spanish rabble outside the dungeons all clamouring for Carlos to be set free. This meant an awful lot of people for Lucy to make up.

Her biggest challenge was to turn the silver-haired, noble-browed, patrician Granville Hastings into Gordon Dillon, the Neanderthal thug who edited the Scorpion and whose hairline rested on his straight-across brows. Lucy was terrified of letting Tristan down, but Granny promptly cheered her up by bitching about Hermione. ‘My dear, the only reason Madam is so addicted to playing the pink oboe is that she’s read that seminal fluid rejuvenates the vocal cords.’

Lucy giggled, then added charitably that it seemed to work.

‘She showed me the marvellous reviews she had for Rinaldo.’

‘Her mother must have written them,’ said Granny waspishly.

‘Oh, you do cheer me up.’ Lucy was sticking on a long line of beetling black eyebrow.

‘Don’t take any truck from her, Lucy Lockett,’ said Granny, ‘or from Alpheus, who’s such a wooden actor he makes that table look like Anthony Hopkins, and you’re going to have dreadful trouble with his hooter.’ Granny smirked admiringly at his own beautifully aquiline nose. ‘Alpheus has a bigger conk than Rudolph the Reindeer.’

Lucy had just grabbed a pair of scissors to trim the ends of Granny’s brows when Meredith bustled in in great excitement.

‘You can down tools, Lucy darling. Hi, Granville dear. Repairing a dungeon wall, one of the set-builders has unearthed a skeleton with a rosary round its neck.’

‘Oh, my God.’ Lucy nearly dropped her scissors.

‘Anyone we know?’ asked Granny, retrieving a dropped stitch.

‘Probably the planning officer,’ said Meredith gleefully. ‘He’s been so dire.’

The dungeons at Valhalla had always been damp and chill. Now none of the crew would go in there, even after Percy the Parson was summoned and sprinkled holy water from a Smirnoff bottle.

Ever conscious of a spiralling budget, Tristan gritted his teeth. He’d have to reschedule. Mikhail had now rung in from Moscow claiming to be laid low with bronchitis, so Baby could shove off for a few days and stop making a nuisance of himself and they could switch to the Great Hall, which had been transformed by Meredith, with the help of a massive white and gold silk four-poster, into King Philip’s bedroom.

Meredith’s minions were already busy dusting the arctic white marble chimneypiece, and touching up gilt cherubs, who were getting up to no good in the frieze running round the white walls. The prop table groaned with priceless ornaments, which Rannaldini intended to keep after filming and which Meredith kept rearranging, driving tiny Simone crackers.

Griselda had agonized long and loudly over what a king should wear in bed and settled for a magnificent Turnbull & Asser dressing-gown in pink and purple stripes, which Alpheus was equally determined to hang on to after filming. Having spent a duty fortnight in the Caribbean with his wife, Cheryl, he was also frantic to screw Chloe.

Filming began with the insomniac Philip’s great soliloquy. Even though he had played the part twenty times,