‘Who left petrol in that can?’ he screamed. ‘Someone has tried to murder my daughter.’
‘They were all filled with water,’ stammered an aghast Wolfie, ‘I checked them.’
‘Well, heads will roll.’ Everyone retreated as Rannaldini glared round.
Tristan promptly called a wrap for the day. ‘I’m taking Tabitha home.’
‘You can’t,’ muttered an appalled Bernard. ‘All these extras, a full cast, we’ve got hours of light left.’
‘I don’t geeve a fuck. Oscar can take over.’
‘Tabitha will stay at Valhalla. Her mother will look after her,’ snarled Rannaldini, ‘and you can carry on.’
‘No!’ Tab was hysterical. ‘I want to go home with Tristan.’
Even Griselda was roused from her despondency over Hermione’s wrecked dress. ‘I always said those two would end up together,’ she hissed to a boot-faced Alpheus. ‘At least they’re the same class. Here you are, darling.’ She slipped Tab’s short red shift over her head, sliding it down her body as she removed the heretic’s robe. ‘Go home and have a heavenly tryst with triste Tristan, and boo sucks to sodding Rannaldini.’
‘That little madam gets everyone nice,’ said Baby sulkily.
A stricken Lucy fled to her caravan. A stunned Wolfie kept repeating that there had been no petrol in the cans. Rozzy had mindlessly collapsed into Rannaldini’s executive producer’s chair, tears streaking down her face.
‘Tristan could have been killed.’
‘You’re so wet, my dear Rozzy,’ sneered Rannaldini, ‘you could have put the fire out yourself. Clive?’ He clicked his fingers for his shadow, then dropping his voice: ‘Follow the two of them, see what they get up to.’
32
At Magpie Cottage, Sharon the Labrador, singing in delight, welcomed Tristan by bringing him a pair of Tab’s knickers.
‘You sing better than Hermione.’ Tristan stooped to pat her.
Tab laughed, then gave a sob and fled upstairs to examine her naked lashless face in the bathroom mirror. Five minutes later Tristan found her shaking uncontrollably, rubbing toothpaste into her blanched cheeks. He was amazed, then touched when she refused a glass of brandy. ‘I promised God I wouldn’t and He — admittedly helped by you — has just saved my life.’
On the bed, Snoopy gazed up from one of her pillowcases, dinosaurs from the other. Tristan had just persuaded her to lie down on the Peter Rabbit duvet when the doorbell rang.
‘Tell it to go away,’ pleaded Tab. ‘Don’t bang your head on the beam going down.’
It was James Benson, the smooth family doctor who had been summoned to so many Campbell-Black and Rannaldini crises in the past. Agreeing with the paramedics that Tab was unhurt but deeply shocked, he gave her a shot.
‘You’ll be fine, sweetie. You’re a lucky girl. It would have been a tragedy if that lovely face had been spoilt. Where’s your husband?’
‘In Australia. Tristan saved my life. Will you see he’s OK?’
Downstairs James Benson produced some very strong painkillers. ‘You’ve come off worse than she has,’ he said, as he accepted a large brandy. ‘Thank God she’s off the booze, but she’s not in good shape. She was clinically depressed after she lost the baby in March, and she burst into tears when I said I’d seen Rupert last week. I’d give the old bastard a ring — I’m convinced he’s missing her as much as she’s missing him.’
‘It’s all Helen’s fault,’ exploded Tristan. ‘Bloody woman doesn’t give a stuff about Tab.’
‘That’s not fair,’ said James Benson sharply. ‘I first treated Helen when she wasn’t much older than Tab. She was the loveliest thing I ever saw, and sweet too. If she hadn’t been a patient, I’d have made a serious play. Rupert was away when she nearly died having Marcus, he was even more humiliatingly unfaithful to her than Rannaldini, if that’s possible. Between them, they’ve done for her.’
Tristan was amazed by the venom in James’s voice, but Tabitha was his only interest. ‘What about Isa?’
‘Cold fish, corroded with moral outrage against the Campbell-Blacks. He’ll never forgive Tab. Sooner she’s out of this marriage the better.’
Tristan was pacing the room, clearly desperate to be left alone with Tab. Leggy and effortlessly elegant, despite his dusty espadrilles and dirty frayed white shorts, he reminded James of a heart-throb admired by his own generation: Gérard Philippe.
‘I know it’s none of my business,’ he drained his brandy, ‘but she’s very vulnerable.’
Having let the doctor out, Tristan noticed a framed photograph on the desk of Isa smugly riding in the winner of last year’s Gold Cup. Parking his green chewing-gum on his rival’s face, he belted back upstairs.
‘I’m going to make you a cup of tea.’
‘Hot sweet tea!’ mocked Tab. ‘I’d rather have hot sweet Montigny. Please don’t leave me.’
‘I won’t.’
He was touched to see Schiller’s Don Carlos beside Dick Francis on the bedside table.
‘I’m trying to educate myself,’ she muttered.
‘Are you sure you’re not hungry?’
Tab shook her head. ‘Sharon probably is.’
‘I feed her. I give her sheep chops I find in fridge.’
Tab giggled. ‘Flora and Baby call Griselda: Lady Caroline Sheep. I’m sorry I’m holding up your film, but it was so cool you telling Bernard and Rannaldini to fuck off, and leaving three hundred and fifty extras and Dim Hermione all cooling their heels because of me.’
Tristan lay on the bed beside her.
‘Am I squashing you?’
‘Not enough,’ mumbled Tab.
Tristan could feel the faint down of her leg against his. He thought she’d fallen asleep, then her hand crept into his.
‘Are your poor burnt hands agony?’
‘Not when you hold them.’
The smell of wild mint and meadowsweet was drifting in through the window. Outside, wild roses cascaded over dark green trees like a William Morris wallpaper. As Tristan lay up on his side he thought he had been caught up in some time warp. Without her lashes and eyebrows and with her extreme pallor and her hairline temporarily singed back an inch, Tab had become a sixteenth-century beauty, Elisabetta, or even Eboli. Her forehead was as white as the moon, her lashless lids like magnolia petals.
James Benson’s painkillers had begun to kick in. Bending back his hand as though he were drying his nails, because his palm was still very sore, Tristan ran the inside of his wrist up the red chiffon dress, feeling the concave belly, the soft swell of breast, only to be halted by a rock-hard nipple.
As he bent over and kissed her, Tab gave a gasp and kissed him back in ecstasy, breathing in a faint tang of Eau Sauvage, and the mint of his chewing-gum, burying her fingers in his thick silky hair, feeling his big bumpy head, so different from Isa’s, which was as narrow as a weasel’s.
‘I have longed for you,’ murmured Tristan, laying his cheek against hers, ‘ever since I saw you at the traffic-lights in Rutminster drinking vodka, Sharon across your thighs instead of a safety-belt. Straight away I want to be safety-belt that protect you,’ he smiled down at the malevolent little eyes and great gnashing teeth on the pillowcase beside her, ‘even from dinosaurs.’