Score!

Isa, who had a strong sense of dynasty and a smouldering eye for the main chance, hoped that Rannaldini would settle money on her as hinted, and insisted they got married. There was no way a possible Lovell heir was going to be terminated. Anyway he couldn’t get enough of Tab.

But he was worried sick about Martie, his Australian girlfriend, to whom, in explanation of his absence, he had considerably exaggerated Jake’s illness. In junking her and consorting with the devil-led Campbell-Blacks, had he lost all his principles?

Terrified of trapping him, Tab would willingly have had an abortion.

‘I’ve never looked after a man,’ she gibbered. ‘I’ll probably give you hay for dinner.’ But she loved him so passionately, she was only too happy to get married.

Events were much bowled along by Rannaldini, who not only agreed to pay for the wedding, which — because of his overflowing diary — could take place only on a late afternoon in the middle of December, but also offered them his latest purchase, Magpie Cottage, just across the valley, rent-free.

Helen had mixed feelings. Tab could have done infinitely better and it would mean the press raking up her affaire with Isa’s father, Jake, but she’d enjoy showing everyone at the wedding how much better she looked than Tory, the wife Jake had gone back to. She must book in for a few days at Champney’s.

Finally there was undeniable pleasure in how much the whole thing would enrage Rupert, and at least it meant that Tab, who had draped a banana skin on Psyche’s head only that morning, would move out. And Rannaldini wouldn’t run after her any more if she married Isa, who looked capable of knifing any competition — or so Helen thought.

8

Meanwhile, rehearsals for Don Carlos were supposed to have started in a defunct WI hall in North London. Tristan, however, grew increasingly frustrated when all his stars, headed by Fat Franco who was singing Otello at La Scala, failed to turn up. This meant that poor Mikhail, whose hotel bill was being picked up by Liberty Productions, had no-one to rehearse with except his voice coach, who found it a great strain having to squawk Hermione’s and Chloe’s parts, let alone growling like an old bear pretending to be Alpheus. The reason for this mass absenteeism was that top singers hate rehearsing because they don’t get paid for it. ‘Why should we roll up because Mikhail Pezcherov hasn’t sung the part in English before?’ they chorused. ‘We’re only going to be reading our parts at the recording anyway, and could be whizzing round the world avoiding tax and making fortunes elsewhere.’

‘Franco and I never met when we did Tristan and Isolde,’ protested Hermione, on a very crackly call from a Florida beach. ‘I just put on cans and recorded the entire opera from the orchestral track.’

‘That’s why it was so lifeless and boring,’ yelled a furious Tristan, but Hermione had hung up.

Tristan also spent a lot of time on the telephone shouting at Rannaldini.

‘How the fuck can I direct individual rehearsals when there aren’t any individuals to direct?’

‘I am shocked at them all,’ lied Rannaldini, and to placate Tristan, he invited him down to Valhalla the following Saturday. ‘Then we iron out every problem. I also invite that Australian tenor, Baby Spinosissimo,’ Rannaldini added airily. ‘He’s coming down to see his jockey, Isa Lovell, who by an extraordinary coincidence happens to be my jockey. Why don’t you drive down together?’

Rannaldini rubbed his hands in glee. What frisson it would add if Tristan, and particularly Baby, were present at the wedding! Thank goodness, Clive, his bodyguard, had discovered that on the big day Rupert would be out of the country with his son Xavier.

Poor Xav had not only had to endure Cosmo’s horrible bullying. Rupert had also found his little son sobbing his heart out because he’d been scrubbing his face for hours trying to get it as white as Rupert’s. Rupert had struggled not to weep too. Instead he decided to give Xavier some sense of identity by taking him back to Colombia. Here, Xav could meet the nuns in the Bogotá convent in which he’d spent his first two years, and see something of the ravishing surrounding countryside. Taggie, Rupert’s wife, and Bianca, Xav’s younger sister, would have gone as well if Bianca hadn’t caught measles.

At midnight on the eve of the wedding, therefore, an unsuspecting Taggie was at Penscombe, filling up the deep freeze for Christmas. Bianca, whose temperature was down, was fast asleep upstairs. The six dogs, except for Gertrude the mongrel who always kept an eye open for scraps, slept in their baskets. Two huge moussakas for the staff party were complete, except for the cheese topping which was bubbling on the Aga.