‘Biggest being the operative word. Here’s the guy you want.’ Rupert chucked a photograph down on the table.
‘Wow, who’s he?’ Tristan grabbed the photo in excitement.
‘An Aussie called Baby Spinosissimo, not sure that’s his real name.’
‘Speenos
ees
eemo,’ said Rannaldini coldly. ‘He’s totally inexperienced.’
‘And breathtakingly good-looking,’ said Rupert. ‘Taken them by storm in Oz. Done well enough to buy himself several racehorses.’
‘And, eef he landed the part of Carlos, would no doubt be able to afford more horses for you to train,’ said Rannaldini bitchily. ‘Leave the casting to us. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘How about Elisabetta becoming an American?’ suggested Sexton, who never gave up. ‘They adore Dame Hermione in the US.’
‘Shows how stupid they are,’ snarled Rupert. ‘America was hardly built, like my house,’ he glared at Rannaldini, ‘in the middle of the sixteenth century, and Hermione would have even more difficulty in passing herself off as a Red Indian than as an eighteen-year-old virgin.’
The meeting ended in uproar.
‘Who’s getting married?’ asked Tristan.
‘Lovely girl — conductor actually — called Abigail Rosen, marrying a lucky sod called Viking O’Neill,’ said Rupert, breaking off one of Rannaldini’s crimson orchids and putting it in his buttonhole.
‘Rannaldini knows Viking,’ he added nastily. ‘He’s the horn player who hit him across a hotel dining room a few nights ago. Easy as a shot-putter — or shit-putter, in Rannaldini’s case.’
But the gods were on Rannaldini’s side. As the front door banged behind Rupert, Helen Rannaldini rushed into the sitting room.
What a beautiful woman, thought Tristan, admiring the tragic, ravaged face, as he leapt to his feet. But Helen was too distraught to notice him.
‘Oh, Rannaldini, Tabitha’s on the phone. She’s been fired! I hoped I’d catch Rupert.’
‘He’s gone, let me talk to her.’ Rannaldini whisked out of the room. ‘Perhaps you could organize some drinks, my dear.’
He was sweating with excitement as he picked up the telephone. As he had predicted, his stepdaughter had flipped when his faxes had arrived. Tabitha had always been Rupert’s favourite child and suddenly Marcus, her brother, had stolen his affection. She was shocked rigid to discover Marcus was gay, and crazy with jealousy that Rupert seemed to approve of Marcus’s new love.
‘Daddy was always so foul about my boyfriends, and now he’s crawling all over some poofter. And there’s even a photograph of Marcus and Nemerovsky hugging on the front of the
Washington Post
— yuk!’
Having read the faxes, Tabitha had ridden in a cross-country competition, hurtling over the fences as though death were the favourable alternative, before sliding off her horse, The Engineer, fifty yards past the post. The course doctor had diagnosed her as dead drunk.
Yesterday morning she had been suspended for nine months, mostly because of her appalling language and lack of contrition. Afterwards, she had gone out and got even drunker, she had only just woken and screwed up courage to ring England. How fortunate that Rupert and she had missed each other.
Rannaldini was smiling broadly. ‘My naughty child! Come home so I can spank your bottom,’ he quivered in delighted expectation. ‘You have been away far too long. I’ll send the Gulf.’
‘I’ll make my own way. I want to travel with The Engineer. Could you possibly lend me a couple of grand?’
4
Euphoric at the thought of Tabitha returning, Rannaldini swept into the drawing room and promptly invited her mother to join the trip to Prague. After all, Prague had been where he had first bedded Helen on the stage of an opera-house where, earlier in the evening, he had conducted
Don Giovanni
, and he didn’t want her to give him a lousy press as a husband if Tabitha was coming home.
‘I can’t go,’ wailed Helen. ‘I’ve got to host a dinner for Save the Children.’
‘Bussage will cancel it, and tomorrow I will send Save the Children a large enough donation to quell any disquiet,’ said Rannaldini expansively.
‘I would love to go,’ Helen told Tristan wistfully. ‘Prague was the place—’
‘Where you and I spent our first wonderful romantic weekend, exactly one year, eleven months and three days ago,’ said Rannaldini, kissing her.
‘You remembered the exact date.’ Helen’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Of course,’ said Rannaldini smugly. It had not been difficult, it had also been his forty-fourth birthday.
‘But I haven’t packed.’
Rannaldini looked at his watch.
‘You have half an hour. Serena won’t be here until five.’
Serena Westwood was a young, ambitious record producer, who had just been poached by Rannaldini’s record company, American Bravo. Her first assignment was to produce the recording of
Don Carlos
.
Helen nearly refused to go to Prague when she saw Serena, who looked like a brunette Grace Kelly. Her heavy hair, drawn back into a French pleat from a snow-white forehead, was shinier than her patent leather ankle boots, and she was wearing nothing under her austerely cut pinstripe suit.
Rannaldini had clearly been saving Serena’s child as well as sending a vast cheque to Save the Children because Serena immediately kissed him, thanking him in a cool, clear voice for flying up two of Helen’s young maids, Betty and Sally, for the night to look after her four-year-old daughter, Jessie.
‘Bussage masterminded the whole thing,’ said Rannaldini smoothly, ‘and it is good for Sally and Betty to have an outing.’
‘Jessie fell so in love with them she hardly noticed me leaving,’ said Serena, turning to an outraged Helen. ‘Oh, Lady Rannaldini, I know it’s a liberty hijacking your maids, but I’ve been stuck in Rome with Dame Hermione and rushed home to find my nanny had walked out, so Sir Roberto very kindly came to my aid. But it’s you I’ve got to thank.’
‘We cannot cast Posa without Serena,’ said Rannaldini. ‘Now we have time for a glass of champagne.’
‘How was Hermione?’ snapped Helen, who detested her husband’s mistress.
Serena waited until Rannaldini had left the room to get a bottle, then said, ‘Absolutely bloody. She’s recording
Arsena
in Rome next week so I spent all yesterday checking out hotels with her. They were either too hot, too cold, too dark, too light, too big and not cosy enough, too poky. I kept frantically apologizing to the hotel managers — you know how sweet and obliging the Italians are. She deserves a kick up the
arsena
.’
‘She does,’ agreed Helen ecstatically.
‘I finally flipped and shouted at her,’ confessed Serena. ‘So, as a peace offering, I sent her some ravishing lilies and the bitch rang up shouting that they made her sneeze. “I want yellow rosebuds in future, and I’ll tell you exactly which florist to go to.”’
What a lovely young woman, thought Helen, putting her arm round Serena’s shoulders in an utterly uncharacteristic gesture of intimacy.
‘Come and meet our director, Tristan de Montigny.’
‘He’s next door phoning his auntie Hortense,’ volunteered Sexton.
Poor old Hortense was being extremely cantankerous and giving Tristan a long-distance earful. For the first time in eighty-five years, she was no longer Étienne’s little sister. As head of the family, she was feeling old, arthritic and frighteningly exposed. Tristan so wished he could comfort her.
Oh, my goodness, thought Serena, as he wandered back into the room. He was wearing a battered leather jacket, a buttoned-down peacock blue shirt, and Levi’s clinging to his lean hips. Serena immediately wanted to plunge her fingers into his shock of dark hair, and run her tongue along his rubbery jut of lower lip before burying her mouth in his. Instead, she smiled coolly, accepted a glass of Dom Pérignon, and said, ‘Tell us about this Posa, Rannaldini.’
‘He’s called Mikhail Pezcherov. Solti call me after hearing him do the role in Russian. He’s now singing Macbeth in some crappy production and making ends meet belting out songs in a nightclub.’
‘And which do we have to endure?’
‘If we leave soon, we’ll make the second act of
Macbeth
.’
Landing in Prague, they were driven over the cobbles of ill-lit back streets to a crumbling opera-house. Rannaldini, well known to scream at latecomers, had no compunction in sweeping his party into their seats in the middle of the banquet scene. A rumble of excitement went through the theatre and Lady Macbeth stopped singing altogether to gaze at the great Maestro.
Another wild-goose chase, sighed Serena, who’d made sure she was sitting next to Tristan. The sets and costumes might have come from an amateur operatic society’s production of
Brigadoon
. Neither conductor, soloists nor chorus could agree on
tempi
. Attempting to glide through a castle wall, Banquo’s ghost sent it flying.
But out of this shambles came a voice of such beauty, so deep, rich, soft, yet intensely masculine, that Rannaldini’s party turned to each other in rapture. Tristan was so excited he hardly felt Serena’s pinstriped leg rubbing against his.
Mikhail Pezcherov was also an excellent actor, with a square, expressive face and strong features, enhanced by a black moustache and beard, and a curly bull’s poll tumbling over soulful dark eyes. More important, if he were going to play the gallant Marquis of Posa, he was of heroic stature, with long, strong legs that would look marvellous in tights.
Afterwards, he welcomed Rannaldini and his party backstage.
‘My knees knock, my tongue thicken in mouth, I can only croak hello, I am so excited,’ he announced, thrusting mugs of very rough red wine into their hands.
He wished he could afford something more expensive but all his money was going home to support his darling wife, Lara, and his children. Showing the visitors their photographs, he wiped away copious tears, but all would be worthwhile, if they could live together one day in comfort.
‘How did you meet your wife?’ asked Helen.
‘I was best man at wedding. Lara was bridesmaid. I sing “Nessun’ Dorma” at reception. Zat was zat,’ sighed Mikhail.
‘Lady Rannaldini and I had our first romantic weekend in Prague,’ purred Rannaldini.
‘Zat is good,’ said Mikhail. ‘I trust guys who love their wives.’
‘I too.’ Rannaldini caressed Helen’s cheek.
Really, thought Helen, when he’s as charming as this, I can remember why I married him.
Back at Rannaldini’s suite, Mikhail got stuck into a better class of red, wolfed down his own incredibly tough steak, and polished off everyone else’s leftovers.
Rannaldini, who for once hadn’t made a single bitchy remark, produced the score of
Don Carlos
and thumped away on the piano. When Mikhail came to the end of Posa’s wonderfully beautiful dying aria, it seemed impossible that only five listeners could have made such a noise, cheering and shouting until people in the next rooms banged on the thin walls.
‘So thrilling to find him together.’ A tearful Helen squeezed Serena’s hand.
‘You’re going to give the part exactly the right ker-pow quotient, Mick,’ Sexton told Mikhail. ‘Tomorrow our people will call your people.’
‘You better call my vife, she handle money,’ said Mikhail. ‘If I really have zee part?’
‘You have it,’ said Rannaldini, who had been particularly captivated when Mikhail congratulated him on his piano-playing. Not since Hermione had he discovered such a thrilling talent. Now, where had he put his treasured jade fountain pen? In his excitement, he must have handed it absent-mindedly to the waiter after he’d signed for room service.
‘May I call my Lara?’ asked Mikhail, as his glass was refilled yet again.
‘Go into our bedroom,’ said Rannaldini.
‘Can I possibly borrow your mobile to check on Jessie?’ Serena asked Sexton. ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling I’ve left mine in the taxi.’
Helen had buttonholed Tristan. When she’d first moved to England from America, she told him, she had worked as an editor in publishing, which had involved a lot of research. Perhaps she could help out on
Don Carlos
.
Tristan listened politely. Close up, Helen’s huge, staring eyes, ribby body, spindly legs and flesh worn down to her admittedly perfect bone structure, reminded him unnervingly of paintings of chargers dying of starvation in the Crimean War.
Across the room, trying to make Tristan jealous, Serena was chatting up Rannaldini, who was terribly sexy, but definitely not husband potential.
‘We
must
have dinner one evening,’ he was murmuring. ‘Bussage can always find a window for special people. At least promise to sit next to me at the Gramophone Awards on Tuesday.’
Helen’s face had lit up while Tristan talked to her, but it went dead as she noticed the wolfish expression on Rannaldini’s. Meticulous by nature, Helen became obsessive under stress. Now she launched into a frenzy of tidying, lining up scores and magazines, plumping cushions, whipping glasses from people still drinking — anything to maintain her sense of controlling the environment.
‘Leave it. We are not at home,’ exploded Rannaldini, and then, remembering his role as cherishing husband, ‘Go to bed, my darling, you must be tired.’
Having told Mikhail he would fix him up with a shithot agent, Shepherd Denston’s, who would handle everything, and arrange for him to have coaching in Prague to prepare him for rehearsals starting in December, Rannaldini said he was off to bed.
‘Helen and I have happy memories to relive.’
He found Helen faffing round in her nightie. She always laid out her clothes for the morrow, and she was certain she’d packed her saxe-blue cashmere and the lapis-lazuli brooch that went so well with it.
‘You packed in a hurry,’ soothed Rannaldini.
‘I guess one of the maids has nicked it,’ said Helen shrilly. ‘I hate Prague! The beds are so hard, the food’s disgusting, you can’t turn down the heating so I’ll have hot flushes all night, and finally there’s no bath plug.’