Score!

Even when she had tumbled into bed, long after midnight, Lucy couldn’t sleep. The house, like an ancient arthritic, kept shifting its position, creaking and groaning to get comfortable. The wind howled, the central heating gurgled, James was restless, and in the next room Colin Milton was so nervous they might get to the Spanish ambassador tomorrow, he spent all night practising his lines.

Lucy tried not to think about Tristan. For once she was glad when her alarm clock went off at five thirty.

22

From six o’clock onwards a mighty army of lorries, caravans, a canteen, generators, double-decker dining-buses and a Portaloo euphemistically nicknamed the honeywagon rumbled eastwards into Rannaldini’s woods. Their destination was a beechwood known as Cathedral Copse, because its silver trunks soared to the sky like the pillars of a huge nave.

It was a bitterly cold day. In a clearing Oscar, the director of photography, his purple scarf and dark hair flapping, was eating a bacon sandwich, glancing from shivering stand-ins to light meters, and briefing the gaffer, the chief electrician, who in turn told his minions, the sparks, where to put the lights. Except in the place where the singers were going to act, the carpet of faded beech leaves was criss-crossed with camera tracks and cables and teeming with focus-pullers measuring distances, boom operators, and props men trying to look useful.

Over in Make Up, Lucy had grabbed a cup of coffee and a hot dog for James before starting on the long haul of making up Baby, who needed Alka-Seltzer, lots of blue eye-drops, concealer for his dark shadows and blusher for his blanched cheeks.

‘You’ve got such a beautiful face,’ chided Lucy. ‘You should cut out the booze and get a few early nights.’

‘Carlos is supposed to look pale and wan.’

‘Not in this scene. That comes after his dad’s nicked his girlfriend.’

‘How’s Mrs Lovell’s marriage?’

‘Fine.’ Lucy drew a white line inside Baby’s lower lashes to reduce the redness.

‘Yeah, yeah, Rannaldini’s won a peace prize. Is Isa catting around?’

‘You should know. You’re his friend.’

‘He’s not the greatest communicator, except with horses.’

‘Aren’t you nervous?’ asked Lucy, who was accustomed to calming terrified actors, particularly on the first day.

‘Not in the least. Don’t change the subject. You went back to Magpie Cottage — she must have said something. She was certainly on the pull last night, flashing her sea-horse tattoo.’

‘She dressed up because she thought Isa was coming with her. I don’t want to discuss it. Now, what are we going to do about your green tongue? Here’s a pink cough pastille, if you can keep it down.’

Next she had to cope with a sobbing Flora, clutching a furiously yapping Trevor with one hand and tugging her red hair down over her ears with the other.

Whereas make-up artists usually adjust to their subject’s wishes, film hairdressers tend to impose their views on others. Flora had got stuck into the tattered remains of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin only to discover she’d been given a short back and sides.

‘George will sling me out. Oh, for God’s sake, stop it, Trevor!’ Flora’s voice rose to a scream as the little terrier lunged at a surprised James.

‘You can get away with it, you’ve got such a lovely face.’ Lucy tied a powder-blue overall round Flora’s neck. ‘And it’ll soon grow.’

‘Not for three months, it won’t,’ mocked Baby. ‘That gauleiter Simone from Continuity won’t allow it, and Lucy said I’ve got a beautiful face too. She says it to all the girls.’

‘Oh, go away and annoy Wardrobe,’ said Lucy, throwing a sponge at him.

‘I shall go and inhabit my caravan. Look, it’s on the call sheet — “Mr Spinosissimo’s caravan”. It’s eight inches longer than Hermione’s, I measured it — so yah, boo!’

Lucy then had to turn a quaking Flora into Hermione’s private detective, thickening her eyebrows, giving her sideboards and a small moustache, and creating brown stubble with a dry sponge.

‘I’m bored in my caravan. It’s lonely being a mega-star,’ said Baby, half an hour later. He was so turned on by Flora’s new butch look, he couldn’t stop pinching her bottom.

‘You’re wanted in Wardrobe, Mr Spinosissimo.’ Standing in the doorway, his shoulders broadened by a lumber jacket, was a stony-faced Wolfie. ‘Get your ass into gear, the director’s waiting.’

‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen. Heil Hitler.’ Baby goosestepped after Wolfgang. ‘Christ, it’s cold. If March is meant to go out like a lamb, this one’s New Zealand and deep-frozen.’

Over at Wardrobe, Tristan and Lady Griselda, in a floor-length fur-lined red coat and a fake-fur hat like a tsar, had decided that as Carlos had just flown into France incognito, it would be more appropriate for him to lurk at the meet in a covert coat.

‘Wouldn’t a flasher’s mac be more suitable?’ said Baby.