Elegant, tall, silver-haired, always exquisitely dressed, Granny appeared a cosy old pussy-cat. Inwardly his heart was breaking. For years he had sung Philip II, the finest bass role in the repertoire, but now, at nearly sixty-four, he had been demoted to the just as difficult but more pantomime villain role of the Grand Inquisitor. As the bigger part, Philip also got the bigger pay cheque, and keeping Giuseppe was very expensive.
Alpheus P. Shaw III, a very successful, self-regarding American bass sitting at the head of the table, was pointedly ignoring Granny because they had just sung Philip and the Inquisitor in the same production in Paris. Granny, supposed to be blind in the part, had totally upstaged Alpheus by bumping into furniture and at one moment, when Alpheus was hitting a ravishing top note, putting his finger into a candle flame and saying, ‘Ouch.’ Alpheus, who had no sense of humour, had been outraged.
A magnificent-looking man, with red-gold hair brushed back from a noble forehead, Alpheus looked as though he’d been carved out of Mount Rushmore. Married twenty years and the father of three fine sons, he was also a stern upholder of family values.
As he forked up a smoked-salmon parcel with his right hand, however, Alpheus’s left hand foraged between the plump, white thighs of Chloe the mezzo. He and Chloe had fallen in love two years ago when they both appeared in Aida. Engagements had separated them, so they had accepted parts in Don Carlos to be together in the long weeks of recording and filming. Alas, Alpheus’s wife, Cheryl, harboured suspicions, and was threatening to join him on location.
The great din of chatter suddenly stopped as Rannaldini stalked in with all the prowling chutzpah of a leopard who has no intention of changing a single spot.
No star in decline wins Record of the Year.
‘It’s God,’ murmured two record executives, as he swept past them.
He was followed by Hermione Harefield, looking slightly flushed. The lunchers giggled as they noticed the jacket of her purple Chanel suit had been wrongly buttoned up.
‘Gangway, gangway for Dame Hermione,’ yelled Howie Denston pummelling aside other late-comers and sycophants, as Hermione glided across the room as stately as the QE2.
‘I so wanted to creep in here anonymously,’ she was saying loudly.
Embracing Tristan, with whom she intended having an affaire on location, kissing Sexton with whom she did not, Hermione totally ignored that upstart Chloe the mezzo, whom she disliked intensely, and Serena, whom she’d not forgiven for sending the wrong flowers, and Granny, who had never treated her with due reverence. Instead she turned to Alpheus, who was going to sing her husband.
‘Your Majesty.’ Hermione curtsied skittishly.
‘Madama,’ replied a bowing Alpheus, equally skittishly as he held her chair for her.
Everyone was very sad Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, hadn’t made the lunch. She was singing Octavian in Budapest, but sent tons of love. Later, a delightedly squirming Howie would accept the Solo Vocal Award on her behalf.
‘Rozzy’s so lovely,’ sighed Chloe, as Alpheus removed his burrowing hand to cut up his chicken Cenerentola. ‘She’s got no ego problem, unlike some.’ She glared at Hermione.
‘I hope,’ Hermione glared back, ‘that Rozzy is not overstretching her voice. I never do more than forty concerts a year.’
‘Why have you never done a Three Sopranos, Dame Hermione?’ asked the retiring chairman, with all the enthusiasm of one who knows he will never have to handle it.
‘There is only one soprano,’ said Alpheus.
Hermione bowed her head. ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’
Conversation kept being interrupted by waiters grinding black pepper and pouring wine and water.
‘Still or fizzy, Dame Hermione?’
‘Still, please.’
‘One would have known that you would choose only something that ran deep like yourself,’ observed Alpheus playfully.
‘Great big plonker,’ muttered Granny.
‘Amen to that,’ said Chloe.
Alpheus was hung like a donkey.
‘Oh, look,’ she nudged Tristan, ‘here’s your leading man.’
Causing howls of mirth by wearing a vast T-shirt saying, ‘I’ve beaten anorexia’, Franco Palmieri, who was playing Carlos, had reached the Megagram table next door. Appropriating four buckling chairs, he waved jauntily at Chloe then scowled at Alpheus, whom he detested even more than Granny did.
‘Fat Franco longs to be the Fourth Tenor,’ Chloe whispered to Tristan, ‘but very sensibly the others won’t let that conniving shit near them. Don’t worry,’ she added, as she picked the fruit out of her glazed apricot tart, ‘hatred always produces incredible sexual chemistry.’
‘I prefer happy team,’ protested Tristan.
‘With Rannaldini as team leader?’ asked Chloe incredulously. ‘They say his dagger follows close upon his smiles.’
‘He is very great friend,’ said Tristan coldly.
‘Good, perhaps you’ll have a benign influence on him.’
Tristan was heartbreaking, Chloe decided. Those bruised eyes seemed to read her soul. ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ she added. ‘The funeral must have been harrowing. Claudine Lauzerte looked stunning.’
‘She did.’
But even Claudine’s divine presence had not distracted a paparazzi frantic to find out, among other things, why Rannaldini (in even more built-up shoes so as not to be dwarfed by Tristan’s three tall brothers) had carried the coffin.
Noticing Tristan’s hands clamped to his thighs to stop them shaking, Chloe said gently, ‘When I got my first Amneris at the ENO, I splurged on one of your father’s drawings.’
‘He would have loved painting you.’ Tristan found he could say it without too much pain. Chloe couldn’t have been prettier, he decided, very French, in fact. Her straw-coloured bob had a thick fringe, which emphasized permanently smiling, slightly dissipated eyes. Tristan had also noticed long slim legs and a black cashmere bosom, arching like a purring furry cat inside her dove-grey suit.
Glancing up, her eyes widened and held his for longer than necessary. She would be perfect to screw on location, he thought, but since Étienne’s death his libido seemed to have gone into hibernation. He knew he had snubbed Serena the other night, and would have to put in a lot of spadework if she wasn’t going to act up during the recording. Idly he noticed Chloe putting Sweetex into Alpheus’s cup of coffee, and wondered if they were having an affaire.
‘Carlos loved his granddad, Charles V, like Prince Charles loves the Queen Mum,’ Sexton was telling Granny’s boyfriend, Giuseppe, who had sunk nearly two bottles of red and was still flirting with Serena in the hope of a fat record contract.
At last Rannaldini had reached the table. Wafting ‘Maestro’, his famous scent, created specially for him by Givenchy, longing to goad all the male members of his cast that in Mikhail Pezcherov he had discovered the greatest bass baritone of the age, he immediately insisted that everyone swap places.
‘It is crazy,’ grumbled Tristan, who was now next to Granny, ‘Giuseppe, who is twenty-eight like me, is playing not only Alpheus’s father, but Fat Franco’s grandfather, and he must be half Franco’s age.’
‘That’s opera for you,’ said Granny, in his beautiful voice. ‘Although no stretch of the imagination would go round Franco’s waist these days.’
‘Have you met Rupert Campbell-Black?’ asked Tristan.
‘I would walk naked across the Arctic Circle for a touch of his nether lip,’ sighed Granny.