Score!

‘Are you going to be a musician?’ asked Hermione.

‘No.’ Tristan blushed and stroked the camera. ‘I’m going to make films.’

He was too happy to absorb the tensions around him. Singers are often so fired up after a performance, they want sex instantly. Franco’s machismo was clearly dented because Hermione made it plain she was interested only in Rannaldini, which didn’t improve Cecilia’s temper either. She and Franco muttered that Hermione had deliberately hung on to notes to make them run out of breath. Nor would she have got such applause in the middle of Act V if Rannaldini hadn’t made an artificial pause. Fortunately Hermione didn’t understand Italian.

She was like one of his sister’s old-fashioned dolls, Tristan decided, who opened their big eyes and said, ‘Mama,’ although in Hermione’s case it seemed to be, ‘Me, me.’

‘Was it really twenty call-backs?’ she was now asking Rannaldini. ‘Pinch me, so I know I’m awake.’

She screamed as Rannaldini pinched her hard enough to leave white marks on her arm. Then he dropped his sleek dark head and kissed them better. Cecilia stormed out, pretending that their daughter Natasha had flu.

‘My wife is more neurotic than the horse in Act One,’ grumbled Rannaldini. ‘You should be specially interested in Don Carlos,’ he added to Tristan, ‘because one of your Montigny ancestors visited Spanish court during Philip II’s reign. And the Inquisition kill him, thinking he is spy. I wish I had smart relations like that,’ he went on fretfully.

‘I cannot imagine you not being smart, Signor Rannaldini,’ said a soft, dreamy voice, and they were engulfed in the sweetest scent, as though a bank of violets had bloomed behind them.

It was the only time Tristan had ever seen his godfather blush. Pausing at the table, in floating chiffon as violet as her eyes, a gently mocking smile playing over her full pink lips, was the most beautiful woman in France: Claudine Lauzerte, the actress wife of the opposition Minister for Cultural Affairs.

‘Madame Lauzerte!’

Jumping to his feet, Rannaldini kissed her hand. Then, clicking his fingers at the wine waiter, he beseeched her to join them.

‘I am leaving. I hear your Don Carlos is wonderful, with a sensational new star.’

Bowing and scraping like a brothel-keeper at the arrival of a royal stag party, Rannaldini introduced Hermione.

‘And this is Franco Palmieri who play Carlos.’

Leaping up, Franco sent several glasses and a vase of flowers flying.

Claudine Lauzerte had such impact that for the first five minutes people talked gibberish in her presence, so she turned to Tristan.

‘This is my godson, Tristan de Montigny, Etienne’s boy,’ explained Rannaldini proudly.

‘Ah.’ The violet eyes widened in amusement. ‘Your father often ask me to sit for him, but we are both always so busy.’ She glanced at the video camera. ‘You are obviously destined to become a director. With those looks, every leading lady will do exactly what you tell her.’

Noting Tristan’s pallor, his deep-set eyes mere hollows, she chided Rannaldini. ‘This poor child’s exhausted! Take him home.’

‘I will send you tickets,’ Rannaldini called after her.

‘I cannot believe I’ve met Claudine Lauzerte,’ babbled Hermione. ‘She must have had several facelifts to look so lovely.’

On the drive home, having jettisoned a furious Franco, Rannaldini pointed to a round white moon, retreating behind a lacing of dark clouds.

‘She is upstaged by your beauty,’ he told Hermione.

From the back seat, Tristan noticed Hermione continually holding her throat as if it were some precious jewel. Tomorrow he would take his new metal-detector, a present from Aunt Hortense, into the Bois and find her — and perhaps Claudine Lauzerte as well — a diamond ring.

Hermione was now complaining about lecherous conductors.

‘I was doing Rinaldo last week and Sir Rodney Macintosh, who must be over sixty, asked me to his room for a nightcap and greeted me wearing nothing but a pair of socks.’

Rannaldini wasn’t remotely shocked.

‘Eef you knee conductor in groin, he won’t give you more work. You must invent fiance, preferably black belt at judo.’

Even such a fascinating subject couldn’t stop Tristan dropping off. Later he never knew if he’d dreamt it, or whether Rannaldini’s hand really had vanished into Hermione’s dark lace dress, and a moonlike breast emerged.

He did wake screaming, however, as Rannaldini pulled up outside the house and Etienne, still in his painter’s smock, loomed huger and blacker than the Grand Inquisitor in the doorway. Although his father cheered up when he saw Hermione, he curtly dispatched Tristan to bed.

‘And no ducking out of school tomorrow.’

‘Good night, little one,’ called Rannaldini, then, to irritate Etienne, ‘I’ll be up in a few minutes.’

In fact it was an hour, and Tristan again woke screaming from lobster-induced nightmare as another broad- shouldered black figure loomed over him.

‘It all ’appen four hundred years ago,’ said Rannaldini as he tucked the boy in. ‘You mustn’t ’ave bad dreams.’

Looking round the bleak attic room, seeing the video camera, the red leatherbound copy of Schiller’s Don Carlos and Hermione’s carnation in a tooth-mug on the bedside table, he picked up the silver frame, containing the only photograph of Tristan’s mother, Delphine, in the house.

‘So beautiful, a little like Madame Lauzerte, don’t you think?’

‘Will she sit for Papa?’ asked Tristan hopefully.

‘I doubt it. She is very pure lady — her nickname is Madame Vierge.’

‘Did they really burn people alive in those days?’

‘They do today with electric chairs and bombs. That’s how your brother, Laurent, died,’ said Rannaldini.

But the terror in Tristan’s eyes was in case his father walked in and heard the forbidden name. Such had been Etienne’s heartbreak, no allusion to Laurent was allowed in the house.

‘Why didn’t King Philip like Carlos?’ Tristan asked wistfully.

‘Fathers and sons.’ Rannaldini brushed back the boy’s hair. ‘Philip was jealous, Carlos had whole life ahead of him — to pull the girls.’

‘Can I work for you when I grow up?’ murmured Tristan.

‘One day we will make great film of Don Carlos together,’ promised Rannaldini.

1

Eighteen spectacularly successful years later, on a wet, windy, late-October morning, Sir Roberto Rannaldini gazed down on the valley of Paradise, often described as the jewel of the Cotswolds.

Rannaldini owned many splendid houses, but the brooding, secretive Paradise Abbey, which he had somewhat hubristically renamed Valhalla after the home of the gods in Teutonic mythology, was the one he loved most.

From his study on the first floor he could admire, albeit through mist and rain, his tennis courts, swimming- pool, hangar for jet and helicopter, lovingly-tended gardens and racehorses, grazing in fields sweeping down to his lake and the river Fleet, which ran along the bottom of the valley.

To his left, coiled up like a sleeping snake, was the famous Valhalla Maze. To the right, deep in the woods, lurked the watchtower, where he edited, composed and seduced. Beyond, disappearing into the mist, was the ravishing mill house, belonging to Hermione Harefield, his mistress for the last eighteen years.