her and was equally horrified. Pretending he’d no idea that Rozzy was ill, he casually asked her out to dinner. Inevitably Rozzy asked Lucy to do her make-up.
‘I can’t let Tristan dine with an awful old hag.’
At the Old Bell, away from gossips, Tristan told Rozzy he’d been asked to direct
It was lucky they were sitting in a dark alcove so no-one could see Rozzy weeping again. Tristan knew she would never be able to take up the offer: she might be dead in two years, if, as Lucy suspected, she had secondaries elsewhere, but at least it would give her hope.
Next day Rozzy was beside herself. ‘I never dreamed Tristan thought that much of me,’ she kept saying to Lucy, who was bitterly ashamed to find herself feeling irritated.
27
At the end of May, the weather finally gave way to heatwave. Rozzy coughed more in the dry, dusty heat and grew thinner, her adoring eyes growing bigger in her shrunken face as she gazed at Tristan. Bernard gazed longingly at Rozzy, but even on the hottest day he wouldn’t take off his shirt in case it dented his authority. He encouraged Wolfie to do the same.
For the first year ever, Rannaldini didn’t sprinkle his lawns, so they would look more parched and Spanish. He allowed Mr Brimscombe to water only selected plants: the rest could die of thirst, thus realizing his plan of a Buckingham Palace sweep down to the lake, which was getting perilously low.
Again, despite delays, rows and nightmarish re-scheduling, beautiful scenes were being shot, particularly of the great duet in which gallant Posa defies Philip II on the subject of religious persecution. Here, he so captivates the King, he is nicknamed ‘the King’s Favourite’ by the entire court. It became a running gag on the set that anyone singled out by Tristan became ‘
Playing Posa movingly, however, was not enough to Mikhail, who was getting bored. Paradise was a lovely little village but he wished there were more of it. He was also frightfully jealous that Baby was about to have a shove-and-grunt scene with Chloe.
The occasion, shot in the cow-parsley in the shade of a huge lime to blot out the burning sun, was not without incident. They were just about to turn over, when Lucy hissed, ‘Cover up, Chloe,
It was Percy the Parson, pretending to be birdwatching.
‘Obviously looking for great tits,’ said Ogborne as, with great presence of mind, Wolfie whipped off his dark blue polo shirt and pulled it over Chloe’s head.
The beauty of his young, broad-shouldered body was lost on no-one. Simone immediately took a Polaroid.
‘Oh, hunky, hunky dory,’ sighed Baby.
‘I’ve never been topless before,’ joked Wolfie, to hide his embarrassment.
‘It’s Baby the vicar’s mad about,’ hissed Chloe, as Percy raised his binoculars to peer through an elder bush. ‘Better slip a dunce’s hat over his cock.’
‘My cock is not a dunce.’
‘May I have this dunce?’ asked Meredith, who shouldn’t have been there either, as there were no sets to dress, and everyone collapsed with laughter.
Precious shadows drained away until at last Percy moved on.
‘Get Wolfie’s shirt off, Chloe,’ yelled Tristan. ‘Christ, I feel like Icarus about to melt,’ he added, taking off his director’s cap to mop his brow with his arm.
‘At least you don’t have to sustain a hard-on,’ grumbled Baby.
‘Dong Carlos,’ said Chloe.
They had all corpsed once more when Tabitha thundered round the corner on The Engineer, who shied violently and nearly unseated her. The sight of Tristan, a half-naked Wolfie and all the crew leering joyfully at a naked Chloe and Baby, additionally put her into orbit.
‘You disgusting perve,’ she screamed at Tristan, ‘turning yourselves on making revolting porn movies.’
Swinging The Engineer round, she galloped off in a cloud of dust.
‘Pissed as usual,’ drawled Baby. ‘I dropped off a cheque for her husband last night. Even Sharon was drunk.’
‘Don’t be a bitch, Baby,’ said Lucy furiously.
‘Shut up, all of you,’ shouted Bernard, seeing how upset Tristan was.
But the fun had gone out of the day.
As Chloe walked into the canteen Wolfie handed her a big glass of iced lime juice.
‘Oh, you angel,’ said Chloe, taking a great gulp. ‘Will you marry me when you grow up?’
‘I’m afraid there’s rather a long queue,’ piped up Meredith. ‘I’d like a very small prawn salad, Maria darling.’
Maria, the cook, loved watching the French crew. She loved the sensual way they tore apart their bread, and undressed their prawns with beautifully manicured fingers, knotting their napkins round their necks to protect their perfectly ironed shirts, propping their knives and forks up on their plates, savouring what they were eating, drinking each glass of wine slowly and reflectively, chattering all the time.
Tristan, although he often forgot to eat, would make love in the same leisurely fashion, imagined Maria. Happily married, with a baby on the way, she could still allow herself to daydream. She had been to the hospital for a scan the day before and proudly produced a photograph of the baby.
‘Oh, how lovely!’ cried Lucy ecstatically. ‘Look at its nose, and its head and little legs.’
‘Rather like E.T.’ Meredith took the photograph gingerly as if it were a newborn baby.
‘What a little angel,’ said Oscar, who was the proud father of five.
‘Hello, Tab,’ shouted Griselda, as Tabitha half sheepishly, half defiantly, sidled into the canteen and dropped her bag on an empty table. ‘Come and look at this sweet little babba.’
‘Oh, no,’ Lucy muttered. But it was too late.
As Tab gazed at the photograph, tears trickled down her cheeks.
‘It’s adorable,’ she whispered. Next moment she had fled.
‘What
‘Someone’s left a bag,’ said Simone, who noticed everything.
Inside were only a tattered Dick Francis, a bottle of Evian, a Coutts Switch card and photos of Isa, Sharon and The Engineer.
‘It’s Tab’s,’ said Wolfie.
‘Not the sort to bother with a compact, lipstick or even a comb,’ said Chloe dismissively.
‘She doesn’t need to,’ Wolfie was amazed to hear himself saying.
Behind his smooth, broad, fast-browning back, Meredith and Baby exchanged glances.
‘Do you think he and Tab are going to be the next item?’ Griselda whispered excitedly to Simone, who was suddenly looking very sad.
Tab refused to answer her telephone but, seeing her dirty green Golf outside Magpie Cottage, Wolfie decided to return her bag in the tea-break. Through the car windows, he breathed in great wafts of wild garlic pestled by rain and the soapy smell of the hawthorns. In the lane up to Magpie Cottage, light brown puddles reflected hedgerows and overhanging trees like an album of sepia photographs.
Tab’s lawn was blue with speedwell. A few white irises were fighting a losing battle with the nettles round the egg-yolk-yellow front door. The reek of more wild garlic from the woods behind didn’t altogether disguise the stench of unemptied dustbins. No-one answered the bell, so Wolfie let himself in.
Tabitha, cuddling Sharon on the sofa, was wearing a pale green vest, a bikini bottom, dirty gym shoes and
