Helen’s face had lit up while Tristan talked to her, but it went dead as she noticed the wolfish expression on Rannaldini’s. Meticulous by nature, Helen became obsessive under stress. Now she launched into a frenzy of tidying, lining up scores and magazines, plumping cushions, whipping glasses from people still drinking — anything to maintain her sense of controlling the environment.
‘Leave it. We are not at home,’ exploded Rannaldini, and then, remembering his role as cherishing husband, ‘Go to bed, my darling, you must be tired.’
Having told Mikhail he would fix him up with a shithot agent, Shepherd Denston’s, who would handle everything, and arrange for him to have coaching in Prague to prepare him for rehearsals starting in December, Rannaldini said he was off to bed.
‘Helen and I have happy memories to relive.’
He found Helen faffing round in her nightie. She always laid out her clothes for the morrow, and she was certain she’d packed her saxe-blue cashmere and the lapis-lazuli brooch that went so well with it.
‘You packed in a hurry,’ soothed Rannaldini.
‘I guess one of the maids has nicked it,’ said Helen shrilly. ‘I hate Prague! The beds are so hard, the food’s disgusting, you can’t turn down the heating so I’ll have hot flushes all night, and finally there’s no bath plug.’
‘I will plug your hole, my darling,’ said Rannaldini softly. ‘D’you remember last time we play game of naughty doctor, taking liberties with young girl patient, and how excited you became?’
Helen gasped as he pushed her back on the bed.
‘She has been very naughty.’ Rannaldini locked the door. ‘She deserves good spanking for not eating enough.’
‘The others’ll hear us. You can’t, Rannaldini!’
Parting Helen’s legs, Rannaldini laid his tongue on her clitoris. Not for nothing was he known as the James Galway of Cunnilingus!
Helen achieved orgasm, fantasizing about Tristan de Montigny. Rannaldini pushed himself over the edge thinking about Tabitha.
‘My darling child,’ he murmured, as he came.
‘Why can’t our marriage always be like this?’
‘From now on it will be,’ promised Rannaldini.
Next door Tristan and Mikhail, who was drinking from the bottle, were dissecting the character of Posa.
‘He changes in the opera.’ Tristan lit another Gauloise. ‘He starts out an idealist, then realizes he’s got to act politically to get things done. He has to put on a different face to hide the brutal facts.’
Like you’ll have to, thought Sexton, with a sudden surge of pity, if you’re going to work with Rannaldini.
‘Posa was like IRA freedom-fighter,’ announced Mikhail.
Anxious to make a note about parallels with the IRA, who were very hot in Hollywood at the moment, Sexton found his pocket computer had suddenly disappeared. He was distracted by Serena, who had unleashed her dark hair like a cavalry charge, and undone two buttons of her pinstripe jacket.
‘Can I have a word?’ she murmured.
Wildly excited, Sexton padded after her into the second bedroom.
‘Is Tristan OK?’ she whispered.
‘No, shittin’ himself about the funeral on Monday, poor little sod.’
‘It’s going to be like a state funeral.’
‘In-a-state more likely, wiv all his dad’s ex-wives and mistresses fighting to sit in the front row, and all the paparazzi hangin’ abart.’
God, Serena was pretty. I’m going to score, thought Sexton joyfully.
He was about to unfasten the last button of her jacket and push the door behind them, when she hissed, ‘Get rid of Mikhail.’
‘W-w-what?’
‘At once! Tristan wants to take me to bed.’
Sexton took it on the double chin.
‘Don’t hurt him,’ he urged. ‘He’s on the blink.’
Mikhail was desperate to go on partying and Sexton had frightful difficulty shepherding him into a taxi.
‘Such a lovely straightforward guy,’ said Tristan, as he and Serena walked down the dimly lit landing.
Outside her room, she put a caressing hand on his chest.
‘Sorry about your father,’ she whispered, ‘but a good fuck’s truly the quickest way to cure the pain.’
Taking her key, dodging her puckered-up lips, Tristan dropped a kiss on her cheek. Having unlocked her door for her, however, he showed absolutely no desire to follow her inside. The trouble with new men, thought Serena furiously, was that they were so desperate not to harass women you never knew if they were gay or not.
5
The Gramophone Awards took place five days later over a splendid lunch at the Savoy. Record producers and agents in sharp suits gossiped guardedly as they awaited their illustrious artists in the foyer. Women press officers, their shiny highlighted hair and long golden legs belying the severity of their neat black suits, hooked musical big fish out from their pools of admirers and ferried them like children to the right table. The progress was maddeningly slow because it involved so much hugging and hailing on the way.
More hot and famous than anyone, but hidden behind dark glasses, Tristan reached the table of Shepherd Denston, international artists’ agents, virtually unnoticed. He was delighted, however, when his host, Howie Denston, a fawning little creep who ran the London office, informed him that Liberty Productions’ cast for Don Carlos had cleaned up in the awards.
Alpheus P. Shaw, who was playing Philip II — Howie consulted his pocket computer — was Artist of the Year. Glamorous Chloe Catford, the mezzo, who had posed naked on her winning record sleeve, was the People’s Favourite. Solo Vocal had gone to Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, the Opera Award to Hermione, while Early Opera had been awarded to Granville Hastings, who’d been cast as the Grand Inquisitor. Fat Franco’s Italian Love Songs had been voted Best-selling Record. Most prestigious of all, Rannaldini had won Record of the Year.
‘Odd that you all know in advance,’ said Tristan, accepting a glass of Sancerre.
‘Not at all.’ Howie Denston lowered his voice. ‘Singers have such monstrous egos you’d never get them to an award ceremony unless they knew they’d won.’
Nor was it a coincidence that all the cast of Don Carlos — except Fat Franco — were Shepherd Denston artists. This was because Rannaldini had recently wangled himself the chairmanship of the agency. He had therefore ensured that 20 per cent of the vast fees earned by the singers in the film would go back into Shepherd Denston’s pockets.
Howie Denston, known as Mr Margarine because he spread his oily charm so widely over his artists, had now abandoned Tristan and bolted back to the foyer to await Hermione and his new chairman, who were probably having a bonk upstairs and bound to be late. Tristan didn’t mind being left. He was always happy watching people.
Also at the Shepherd Denston table, besides the award winners, was the retiring chairman, who had an ulcer. Next to him sat Serena Westwood, out of pinstripe into clinging scarlet, acting cool towards Tristan, determined to show him what he had missed by not seducing her in Prague.
Rannaldini, who’d done the seating plan, had also sat Serena next to Giuseppe Cavalli, a hunky young bass, who’d be winning awards in a year or two. Giuseppe had been cast as the ghost of the Emperor, Charles V, who appears at the end of the opera and draws his grandson, Carlos, into the safety of the tomb.
No-one was likely to be safe with Giuseppe, who was an unghostly thug with shoulder-length black curls. Given to check shirts tucked into bulging jeans, he had a huge fan mail from women, but was in fact the lover of Granville Hastings, known as ‘Granny’, who could have uncheerfully murdered Rannaldini for continually fixing Giuseppe up with rich single women. Lone parents were even more predatory than loan sharks, reckoned Granny.