Score!

Realizing she’d goofed, Tab had to recover herself. ‘Adolf’s much more evil elder brother,’ she said haughtily. ‘And don’t you dare take the piss out of me.’

‘Can we get on?’ said a chilling voice, which promptly sent the sun in.

It was Rannaldini.

‘You’re out of order, Wolfgang. Tabitha was quite right to halt the film. That whip’, he added bitchily, ‘is wrong. Hermione had a lash yesterday and The Prince of Darkness should be wearing my saddlecloth. Very black mark for continuity, Simone.’

‘Not if he’s being ridden by a French princess,’ said Wolfie defiantly. ‘Your saddlecloth incorporates the colours of the German and Italian flags,’ and swinging his horse round, he cantered off to tell the hunt to go back up the hill again.

How truly kind of Wolfie to defy his terrifying father for my sake, thought tiny Simone tearfully.

To avoid more chaos, Tristan filmed the hounds on a separate day. The Cotchester Hunt, pulled out by Rupert, had been replaced by a splendidly sixteenth-century assortment of wolfhounds, greyhounds, salukis and lurchers. But being gaze hounds, who chased what they saw rather than what they smelled, they ignored the extra, drenched in aniseed, who’d replaced the stag, and tore instead after the camera moving on its dolly. Soon Ogborne, clutching his flower-pot hat, Valentin, in his new English brogues, and Oscar, who’d nodded off against a copper beech, could be seen belting off into the wood in terror.

James the lurcher, who’d been signed up as a hound, immediately rushed back to Lucy, where the other Valhalla dogs, Sharon, Trevor and Tabloid, Rannaldini’s Rottweiler, who’d all ploughed the audition, proceeded to rubbish him out of jealousy.

‘Cut down the tallest puppy,’ said Flora, who was in such hysterics, she fell off Audrey.

Despite the traumas, wonderful work was being done. Hermione’s long, one-noted ‘Yes’, when she agreed to marry Philip rather than Carlos, had everyone in tears. And at the end of two and a half weeks, the first, and probably most taxing, act was in the can, the buds could feel free to burst open in Cathedral Close, and the wild flowers to throw off their blanket of artificial snow.

Action would now move inside to the dungeons and to Alpheus’s bedroom scene. Alpheus, Granny, Chloe, Hermione, Mikhail and Baby would be needed, but no horses or Flora, so she and Tabitha could have a break.

But there was no respite for Lucy. Her make-up had been inspired, except when Tristan popped into her caravan and her hands started shaking. When he watched the rushes, he realized even more what a treasure he had found. Flora with her short back and sides looked disturbingly androgynous. With miraculous shading, Baby had lost all his puppy fat — he was also acting everyone off the screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off him.

The only person not ravished by the rushes was Hermione. She was in the habit of pestering her agent, Howie Denston, twenty times a day, even ordering him to ring up and tell her chauffeur to turn down the car radio when she was being driven the half-mile from River House to Valhalla.

Now she told Howie to tell Tristan she could only film in the afternoons, when her big brown eyes were fully open. She also sacked her make-up artist and insisted on having Lucy.

Lucy was then summoned to Hermione’s caravan for a glass of very cheap South African sherry as the great diva lay stretched out on a bed, a pad steeped in witch-hazel over her eyes.

‘As I’m playing a beautiful young princess in this film,’ announced Hermione, ‘I thought it fitting at first to employ a beautiful young make-up artist, who would be au fait with the latest trends. While you’re here, Lucy dear, could you peel those grapes, and pop them into my mouth? Now I realize I was wrong.’ Hermione sounded as though she was going over to Rome. ‘Far better to go for a mature, older woman, like yourself, who knows the ropes. You mustn’t be fazed, Lucy. I have every faith in you.’

‘I wanted to ram her bloody grapes down her throat,’ Lucy told Tristan afterwards.

Although he was cross, Tristan was ecstatic Lucy could now feed his ideas into Hermione’s thick skull. But realizing Lucy never finished clearing up and doing her paperwork before midnight, he promised her more help — perhaps Rozzy from Wardrobe.

‘And you need more light in here.’

Lucy was so touched he’d noticed she’d have made up the entire crew. Griselda, however, was livid. Rozzy was the best assistant she’d ever had: she was determined to hang on to her.

Wolfie was also proving a great asset, checking Oscar’s cigars were lit and that Tristan didn’t lose his camera script. And if he found Bernard ugly and uncharming, he didn’t mob him up like the others. Having been brought up with artists, Wolfie was quite used to them losing their head and their nerve several times a day, and somehow managed to get everyone — except Hermione — out of their dressing rooms on time. Outwardly, however, he appeared terribly arrogant.