Score!

Baby, who was supposed to have hurtled across country to join the hunt incognito, was wearing a brown herringbone tweed jacket and, having lost so much weight at Champney’s, was marvelling at himself in buff stretch breeches. As Elisabetta’s bodyguard, Flora was wearing a less fitted brown riding coat to accommodate the bulge of her gun.

‘All of them are same colour as countryside.’ Rannaldini’s voice was rising. ‘They’ll get lost.’

Meredith, oblivious of the storm breaking over his airborne curls, was trying on the diamond tiara Hermione was supposed to wear for Philip II’s coronation.

‘Put on your hats for the total look,’ urged Griselda.

The row escalated because neither Hermione nor Baby were prepared to wear hard hats with black chin straps to resemble Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince Charles.

‘How could anyone fall in love with anyone at first sight wearing that?’ protested Baby. ‘D’you want Hermione to smoke a fag as well?’

‘Those hats are authentic,’ protested Griselda, getting up with a rattle of Valium to tap Hermione’s brim further down over her eyes. ‘We must set a good example to the Pony Club.’

‘Fuck the Pony Club,’ snapped Baby.

‘Rannaldini would quite like to,’ murmured Meredith.

‘You can take off your hats the moment you dismount,’ pleaded Griselda. ‘And Hermione’s blonde wig will then tumble beautifully down her back.’

‘My hair won’t tumble anywhere,’ snarled Baby. He loathed his Prince Charles wig, complete with incipient bald patch, even more than his hat.

Meredith, who was now trying on a flower-trimmed straw bonnet, suggested that Baby’s and Hermione’s hard hats might look better if they were dressed up with long earrings.

‘Only if I can wear my scarlet coat,’ said Hermione mulishly.

‘English women don’t wear—’ began Tristan.

‘But I’m not English,’ said Hermione, with a peal of merry laughter, as though she’d made a frightfully good joke. ‘I’m South African.’

‘Reimpose sanctions,’ muttered Baby.

Valhalla, like many ancient ecclesiastical buildings, was H-shaped with the north and south wings forming the verticals of the H. Rannaldini and his family lived in the south wing overlooking the valley.

Meanwhile, in the north wing, other members of the cast and the upper echelons of the crew were bagging their bedrooms, which in contrast to the lavishness of the south wing consisted rather creepily of ex-monks’ cells reached by badly lit uncarpeted staircases and long, narrow corridors.

‘Bit scary,’ quavered Lucy, pushing a reluctant James into a darkly panelled rabbit warren, almost entirely occupied by a big mahogany double bed.

‘I don’t mind sharing,’ said Ogborne, Tristan’s cocky and Cockney chief grip, who had a shaved head, an earring, and looked like a self-confident pig. Employed to hump equipment around and shove heavy cameras along tracks, Ogborne had had no difficulty in carrying all of Lucy’s cases upstairs.

‘Plenty of room for you, me and Fido in here,’ he said, patting the bed.

‘I talk dreadfully in my sleep, and James snores,’ said Lucy hastily.

Down the corridor, Alpheus Shaw, psyching himself into the part of Philip II, was getting more regal by the second, referring to himself as ‘one’, and striding around with his hands behind his back. He had also demanded the biggest bedroom, which had the biggest four-poster and small leaded windows looking north into the woods and east up the valley.

However, he was deeply displeased that, unlike Tristan, he had not been put in the lush south wing, which he had admired loudly on a previous visit.

Only half the principals were in situ: neither Mikhail, Granny, his wayward boyfriend Giuseppe, Alpheus nor Chloe would be needed for a couple of weeks. Alpheus had come down ostensibly to show solidarity and to inspire the cast. After all, he was the principal male singer now Fat Franco had been fired. In reality he wanted to screw Chloe without having to fork out for a hotel — particularly as his wife Cheryl always went through the Amex receipts.

Looking down, he could see Tristan and Rannaldini walking towards the house, their arms waving as they yelled at one another, their shadows long and black behind them.

Inside the dairy, Meredith, like a small child comforting his mother, was patting the vast shoulders of a sobbing Lady Griselda.

‘It’s just first-night nerves, don’t take it personally.’

Griselda gave a sniff.

‘Try not to get lippy on that hunting tie, Hermsie,’ she called out, ‘and I’d be grateful if you’d all put your clothes back on the hangers.’

‘What time’s dinner?’ asked Baby.

‘Seven thirty for eight,’ said Flora, as she wriggled back into her old grey jersey and scruffy black jeans. ‘I can’t be bothered to go home and tart up.’

20