Score!

‘It was a hunting lodge for Act One, but in the end we never used it,’ explained Wolfie.

Throwing open the door, he thought for a moment two of his father’s prize pigs had pushed their way inside. Then, to his horror, he realized he had caught Alpheus and Hermione in flagrante.

Cheryl was about to black Hermione’s eye with her crocodile handbag, when Hermione rose to her feet, wrapping a white Hilton dressing-gown round her goddess-like form, crying, ‘Cheryl, my dear, calm down! Alpheus and I were only rehearsing for tomorrow afternoon. No-one should act a scene without rehearsing.’

Such was the steamrolling force of Hermione’s personality, they were all silenced. The fans went off murmuring reverently that Dame Hermione was such a professional, particularly when she ordered ‘bubbly’ on the budget for them all at lunch.

Everyone except Chloe and Cheryl was in stitches over the whole affair. The crew wanted to know if Alpheus had a crown on his cock. What, however, a blushing Wolfie reported back to Tristan and Sexton was that Hermione had pubes bigger than Brahms’s beard.

‘I think she ought to trim it before she does a nude scene. Papa could have told her,’ Wolfie blushed even deeper, ‘but he’s away.’

‘How about Mr Brimscombe?’ grinned Sexton. ‘He’d love to do it wiv a Strimmer.’

‘Alpheus can tell her,’ said Tristan. ‘I’m busy. You brief him, Sexton.’

Sexton, however, pussyfooted so much around the subject that Alpheus went the whole hog and Hermione rolled up on the set the following afternoon with a totally shaved bush. This caused more rage and hysterics.

‘Perhaps it was fashionable in the sixteenth century,’ said Sexton hopefully.

‘We’re filming in modern times,’ snapped Tristan. ‘Get her some false pubes,’ he ordered Lucy.

‘It’s called a merkin,’ volunteered Granny.

‘Hardly a word that occurs in crosswords,’ giggled Meredith.

‘During the film of Carmen,’ said Griselda eagerly, ‘when Lilian Watson shaved her armpits by mistake, Make Up had to hold up shooting for two hours while they stuck on individual hairs.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ said Lucy aghast. ‘I’ve just spent even longer covering Dame Hermione with body makeup.’

‘Rather like varnishing the whale at the Natural History Museum,’ said Meredith sympathetically.

‘We’ll just have to shoot her from the back,’ said Tristan, who was torn between tears of despair and helpless laughter, particularly when Hermione summoned him and Wolfie to her caravan to ask if they thought her breasts were too large.

‘You could always get some smaller ones from Props,’ said Wolfie gravely, and both men had to flee clutching their sides.

The set was absolutely crowded out. Mr Brimscombe, binoculars hanging from his scrawny neck, was selling tickets at the door. Ross Benson, who’d been smuggled in by a returned Hype-along to do an in-depth piece, fell off a rafter, fortunately landing on the great four-poster. As he was very handsome, Dame Hermione looked very excited. Tristan, however, flipped.

‘Clear the set! Clear the fucking set!’

‘Please don’t bother,’ said Hermione graciously.

‘Where am I going to hide my microphone?’ grumbled Sylvestre, who usually had to drop it down Hermione’s cleavage.

‘Up her ass,’ volunteered Ogborne.

‘Quiet, please!’ roared Bernard.

‘Lucy,’ howled Tristan, then lowering his voice. ‘Can you do anything about the blue veins on her boobs?’

Lucy darted forward with concealer, murmuring, ‘Don’t you get nervous about taking your clothes off in front of all these people?’

‘Indeed not.’ Hermione looked amazed. ‘A woman should be proud of her body.’ Then, in indignation, ‘Why is that man reading Dogs Today? Very discourteous of him. Oh, it’s you, Meredith. I suppose you don’t really count.’

Bernard grabbed Tristan’s camera script to conceal a huge hard-on.

‘We’re turning over,’ he said hoarsely.

‘Action,’ shouted Tristan.

‘Christ, Alpheus isn’t having to act in this scene at all,’ hissed Sylvestre to Wolfie, a few moments later. ‘He’s bigger than a fucking Thermos.’

‘Hermione ees supposed to be gritting her teeth, Uncle Treestan,’ whispered Simone, ‘but she look as though she enjoy every minute.’

‘Cut,’ said Tristan, then to Hermione, ‘Your husband is virtually raping you in this scene, cherie. Could you possibly act a bit more upset?’

‘There are beings, Tristan’ — roguishly, Hermione quoted him back at himself — ‘who are born for others, who are quite unaware of their own egos. Elisabetta had far too perfect manners to upset her elderly partner by showing him she wasn’t having a good time.’

Tristan was defeated.

‘Okkay, okkay.’ He sighed.

They’d just have to film her even more from behind.

‘I’d take a wide shot on this one,’ he told Valentin.

‘One could hardly do anything else.’

Oscar, slumped over the camera ostensibly checking the lights through his eye-piece, was actually asleep.

‘Talk dirty to me, Alpheus,’ murmured Hermione, who was used to being turned on by Rannaldini’s crooning obscenities.

‘Unless Sexton pays me cash like you,’ murmured back Alpheus, ‘I may have difficulty meeting next year’s tax bill.’

Chloe was utterly mortified. Alpheus had been pompous and self-regarding.

‘But I thought he loved me and would shelter me through life like a great tree,’ she told Tristan, as she toyed with her scallops Mornay in the Heavenly Host that evening.

‘Plants growing in shade miss out on sun and rain,’ said Tristan.

Chloe’s breasts leaping out of that crimson dress had the same springy texture as the scallops, he decided.

‘You and Baby are stealing the show,’ he went on, filling up her glass. ‘You’ll get your revenge on Hermione when the reviews come out. You’re so beautiful, Chloe.’

Chloe glanced complacently at her reflection in a nearby mirror. Lucy’s streaking was so subtle. The dark glasses over her blackened eye showed off the tilt of her nose and the luscious curves of her smiling crimson mouth. She must buy Lucy a box of chocolates tomorrow.

Back at Valhalla, a weary Lucy finished writing the day’s notes and stuck in Polaroids of a naked Hermione and Alpheus. At least she hadn’t had to powder Alpheus’s cock. And Chloe’s lower lip was rather thin so she’d had to extend the natural line along the bottom with a lipbrush and fill in quite a large gap. But the end result had been heavenly, particularly in that incredibly skimpy dress. Tristan had reeked of Eau Sauvage and even put on a suit.

Out in the park, as the orange glow of sunset died away, the occasional bleat of a lamb and the deep- throated reassuring rumble of its mother reminded her of Cumbria and made her long for tumbling grey streams, geometric walls and mountains rising out of the mist. Why did one feel most homesick when one was miserable?

As Tristan walked Chloe back to the north wing, she cursed herself for wasting so much of dinner bitching and talking about herself. She wasn’t used to dining with a good listener. The lamp over the doorway shining through the clematis cast a leaf pattern on Tristan’s face. From the sides of his nose past his beautiful big mouth, two lines dug trenches that had not been there in January. Don Carlos was taking its toll.

‘Your suite or mine?’ she whispered.

There was a long pause. An owl hooted.

‘Darling Chloe.’