Rannaldini blithely blamed Serena.
‘Anyway, those numbers don’t add much to the plot, my darling.’
Baby was outraged he’d been so often drowned by Hermione. Alpheus felt Rannaldini had consistently favoured the orchestra and every other singer. It was sacrilege to cut his great solo in Act IV and his character didn’t ‘garner sufficient sympathy’.
Mikhail was so cross, he rang up Rannaldini in the middle of the night. ‘Why did you not use my third and best take in death of Posa?’
‘Because it was too slow,’ said Rannaldini coolly. ‘Serena wanted to get Acts Four and Five on to one CD for when the record comes out.’
‘At this rate my billing will be so small and low down, only snails and mice will be able to read it,’ sighed Granny, who’d also been savagely cut.
‘Think of poor Verdi,’ snarled Rannaldini. ‘He had to drop the entire first act of Don Carlos, because the Parisians couldn’t get their last trains home.’
‘And directors have been putting it back ever since,’ said Granny drily.
Sylvestre, the handsome French sound engineer, felt Hermione’s performance had been so enhanced by subtle additions that he sent her her cassette with utter confidence. In a frenzy Hermione returned the tape by taxi, shrieking down the telephone and threatening legal action. ‘You have rejected every single take I wanted and my top notes sound terrible.’
Sylvestre waited four days, wrote to Hermione saying he’d laboured all round the clock on a new tape, and sent her back the old one. By return of post, he received from Hermione a letter, which he framed, saying, ‘You have worked miracles.’ Also included was an invitation to luncheon, which lasted twenty-four hours.
There was great consternation when a hatchet job, on the horrors of recording with Rannaldini, appeared in the Sunday Times, written by little Christy Foxe. As Christy subsequently turned out to be Rupert Campbell-Black’s godson, and the son of Janey Lloyd-Foxe, a very dangerous columnist, Rannaldini and Tristan wondered uneasily if this were the first round in Rupert’s war of attrition.
16
One of the secrets of Rannaldini’s success was that he knew when he had pushed those he needed too far. Immediately the editing was finished he suggested he, Tristan and Meredith, the set designer, should recce the state rooms at Buckingham Palace.
Rannaldini and Meredith went back a long way. They had done up numerous houses together without falling out. Aware that Meredith had been the lover of Hermione’s charming husband, Bob Harefield, for fifteen years, Rannaldini had never outed them because he was fond of Meredith, and Bob, as orchestral manager of Rannaldini’s old orchestra, the London Met, had made life incredibly easy for him.
Neither Rannaldini nor Hermione, on the other hand, had made life easy for Bob, who’d pretended he was far too stretched in Australia setting up a new opera company, to come home and organize Don Carlos for them.
Meredith, a hugely successful interior designer, had turned down a mass of work to create the sets for Don Carlos, but he intended to screw a vast fee out of Liberty Productions, and although missing Bob a great deal, he was very excited about working with such an enchanting Frenchman.
On the day of the proposed trip to the Palace, so many builders’ lorries and cars belonging to outraged planning officers were already whizzing in and out of Valhalla that the Fancy Fish frozen foods van slipped through the gates unnoticed. Famed for his cheeky, cheery manner, which could sell shellfish à la King to a barmitzvah party, Terry, the Fancy Fish rep, had long had designs on Valhalla, particularly now rumours were spreading of a film crew rolling up at the end of March.
Harriet Bussage, Rannaldini’s PA, had tipped Terry off that Sir Roberto was in rare residence. On his way to make his pitch Terry decided to pop into Bussage’s cottage, which nestled in a copse half-way up Valhalla’s drive, to deliver a cardboard box of sole Véronique as a thank-you present. Loading up other boxes, in case Bussage was tempted to place an order (Terry never missed a sales opportunity), he was just admiring the snowdrops and aconites in her little garden when he heard a male voice, sepulchral and terrifying:
‘How dare you spell Spinosissimo wrong!’ followed by a great thwack and a shriek.
‘I’m sorry, Maestro.’ It was a woman’s voice now, quavering, pleading. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’
‘How dare you put a comma in that letter to Lord Gowrie, when I dictated a semi-colon,’ intoned the man’s voice.
More thwacks were followed by even more piercing shrieks:
‘Punish me, Maestro, I’m so sorry.’
Rushing to the rescue through the back door, Terry froze with shock. A naked Miss Bussage was spread-eagled face down on the kitchen table, with wrists and ankles strapped to each wooden leg.
Beside her, an equally naked Rannaldini, with an erection rivalling the tower of Pisa, was laying into her reddening but surprisingly trim bottom with a hunting whip. Watching them with indifference was a large fluffy white cat.
Next moment sole Véronique, garlic king prawns, not to mention jumbo crispy cod fingers, destined for Little Cosmo, went flying all over the kitchen and Terry had fled.
‘It was the bleedin’ excitement on their faces fixed me,’ he told his wife that evening.
Five minutes later, Meredith and Tristan, having enjoyed a merry champagne brunch at the Heavenly Host, bounced into Bussage’s parlour to find Rannaldini, immaculate in a pinstripe suit and shocking pink tie, autographing a pile of photographs.
‘Helen said you were here,’ giggled Meredith. ‘The helicopter’s waiting. What the hell did you do to that sweet Fancy Fish man? He’s just taken the side off Tristan’s flash car.’
Booked in for a two-hour trip round the state rooms, which was all the time Rannaldini could spare, they lunched beforehand at Green’s in Bury Street. Over oysters, lobster and Sancerre, they decided they needed ideas for the Great Hall, which was going to be turned into Philip II’s bedroom. They also required a set, probably the Summer Drawing Room, into which Philip summoned Carlos from the polo field for a pep talk. This was a duet composed by Rannaldini, so he didn’t want a too-spectacular décor to distract people from his music. But they could go to town on the state room in which Philip had his great political debate with Posa, which had only been written by Verdi. For this Rannaldini had evil designs on Helen’s Blue Living Room.
Arriving at the Palace, Meredith commandeered the red guidebook. ‘That’s the arch through which diplomats and heads of state enter,’ he announced, as they peered down into the pink-gravelled quadrangle.
‘Her Majesty lives on the opposite side,’ said Rannaldini, pointing to a dark blue door.
‘Why don’t you give her a bell?’ suggested Meredith. ‘Ask if we can pop in for a brandy. You must have met her when she gave you your K.’
‘And on many other occasions,’ said Rannaldini icily. ‘Anyway,’ he added, looking up at the empty flagpole, ‘she is not in residence.’
‘“In 1826 George IV chose John Nash to design a new palace,”’ read out Meredith, ‘“but he was hampered by a chronic lack of funds.” Nash et moi. I expect he gnashed his teeth.’ Rather like a child swinging between two parents, Meredith linked arms with Tristan and Rannaldini. ‘You will give me a decent budget, won’t you, boys? We can’t stint on royalty. Oh, look, they’ve got Sky Television. Lovely to think of that butch Prince Andrew watching all that golf.’
Tristan was gazing up at the lion-coloured columns of the ambassadors’ entrance.