Score!

He was incredibly forgetful, not finishing sentences or remembering names. Before, he’d kept the whole script almost to the line in his head; now Wolfie had to remind him what scene he’d shot an hour before.

His nights were racked by drenching sweats, and hideous dreams of rape, torched flesh and a black cobra curling evilly round the neck of Tabitha, who would suddenly become his lovely, naked mother. How could he blame Maxim for brutal, incestuous lust, when he was tortured himself by the same shaming desires for Delphine?

Often he was seen wandering round Paradise at dawn, muttering, ‘Rannaldini doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

He was still stonewalling about the introductions. The plot was now so cartoon simple he felt that constant reappearances by Rannaldini, explaining what was going on, would hold up the action. It would also mean agonizing cuts of other stuff, paring people like Colin Milton, Granny and Giuseppe down to nothing.

Not up to a tussle, however, he agreed that the Great Hall should be turned into an opera-house with a royal box. Rannaldini would then sweep in in his tails to conduct his overture.

Only two incidents marred the filming of this opening. Meredith was sacked because a falling piece of scenery missed Rannaldini by inches and Lucy, after everyone had raved that her make-up of Granny and the characters in the royal box would win her an Oscar, found an adder coiled in her make-up basket. A terrified Lucy told only Baby, whom she had to make up immediately after her discovery.

‘Must have crawled in by itself.’ Baby tried to cheer her up. ‘Adder in the basket’s better than chicken.’

Tristan had already shot two endings: Schiller’s, in which Philip hands Carlos over to the Inquisition, and Verdi’s, which has the ghost of Charles V, played by Granny’s boyfriend Giuseppe, emerging from his tomb (which looked, according to Granny, like a ‘public lavatory in Morocco’) and drawing a terrified Carlos inside.

Rannaldini now insisted on a third — with the principals of Act V on stage singing the last minute of Verdi’s version, then the film ending with himself on the rostrum acknowledging the ecstatic applause of the audience. The lighting rehearsal on his snow-white shirt-cuffs alone went on all morning. Griselda was then sacked because after twenty-nine fittings, he was unhappy with the cut of his tail-coat.

Rannaldini was even angrier that Giuseppe, thinking he wouldn’t be needed, had buggered off without permission to sing on a cruise ship in the Bosphorus.

‘Get heem back by tonight,’ screamed Rannaldini.

‘Quite right,’ said Granny approvingly. ‘Show him who’s Bosphorus.’

Granny was in a much happier mood. He had finished his patchwork quilt, darling Rozzy was sewing the pieces up for him, and it would look beautiful on his and Giuseppe’s bed. Tristan, heeding a word from Lucy that Granny was worried about work, had spoken to him about a future role as the wonderfully comic Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier.

The day that Tristan shot Rannaldini’s ending was also Mikhail’s thirty-fifth birthday. Having been bumped off in Act IV, Mikhail was not needed and had been happily getting himself and everyone else plastered all day, except Lucy, who was still shocked by the adder and who had to stay sober because she had the loathsome task of making up Rannaldini. She had never met anyone so vain. He wanted bronzer, blusher, white on the inside of his eyelids, mascara, eyeliner and shading, and it took her hours to get his glossy pewter hair just right.

Familiar with Lucy’s body from the relay race and his monitors, Rannaldini kept making suggestive remarks and, when she was trimming the hair in his nostrils and terrified of nicking him, putting a warm, caressing hand between her thighs.

Meanwhile, word was whizzing round the set that Mikhail had been so stoical about missing his wife, Lara, that as a birthday surprise — and sod the budget — Sexton was flying her over from Moscow to emerge from Mikhail’s birthday cake later that evening.

As Lucy was darkening Rannaldini’s eyebrows, Wolfie popped in with glasses of champagne from Mikhail. Rannaldini refused. He never drank before a concert, so Wolfie left a single glass on Lucy’s table and told his father he was wanted on the set in two minutes.

Rannaldini was intensely sexually excited at the thought of being on camera. As Lucy removed the pale blue overall and was nearly asphyxiated by Maestro, his aftershave, he rose, a magnificent figure in white tie, black cummerbund embroidered with a silver skull, and beautifully cut black trousers.

He had other sexual games planned for later in the evening, but as Lucy put back the tops on her bottles, he couldn’t resist putting a hand up her skirt.

‘I know you want Tristan,’ he purred, ‘and he loves only Tabitha, but don’t be sad, Lucy, you have interesting body, and eef I give you few lesson, you could be very passionate.’

His probing fingers wandered upwards.