‘The first time I saw you I thought, Jesus! Although it was probably “Jeshush” because I was so pissed. I asked Lucy as she made me up if she’d seen that fantastically gorgeous man downstairs and she laughed and said yes, but I’d have to give all that up now I was getting married.’
‘Did you marry Isa because you were pregnant?’
‘No,’ confessed Tab, gently pulling fragments of singed hair from his chest. ‘I never do anything because I ought to, so I put you on hold until I galloped round the corner and saw you all ogling that naked bitch Chloe. God, I was cross, but ever since then I’ve looked forward more and more to seeing you on the set. It’s as though you’ve got a halo. You’re the only person I notice.’
‘What about Wolfie?’
‘Sweet, but too straight and he doesn’t have a halo.’
Even though Tristan’s hand was stroking its way very slowly down her body, setting her completely adrift, she had to know.
‘Everyone on the unit spends their time speculating about your sex life,’ she said falteringly. ‘A celibate Frenchman is a contradiction in terms. There must be someone.’
Outside a blackbird was singing, a dog barked in the valley. Sharon barked back.
‘Not any more,’ said Tristan, as his hand now crept up slender thighs, honed by years in the saddle.
‘Please wait!’ begged Tab. ‘There isn’t someone like Isa’s girlfriend in Australia, waiting to rear her hideous head in a month or two? I couldn’t handle it.’
‘Hush.’ As he shut her mouth with his, Tristan’s fingers edged under her knicker elastic into the tightest, stickiest hollow. ‘Oh, ma petite.’
Wriggling out of his arms, Tab leapt out of bed. Like a poppy shedding petals, her red dress slithered to the floor.
Tristan had lost enough weight for her to tug off his shorts without unzipping them. Next moment she was on top of him.
‘Venez inside moi, toute sweet.’
Tristan did just that. As he thrust up inside her, he was briefly conscious of a delicious slipperiness, of muscles closing round him like a fist, and Tab moving, fluid as a dancer. Then he trembled violently, cried out and came.
‘Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m so sorry.’ He buried his face in her shoulder. ‘I should have held out. I am weemp, but you are so lovely, I was lost, I am so sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ Tab kissed him over and over, her tears soaking his shoulder. ‘It’s so gorgeous to be wanted so much. Isa times it like a race. Conserve the energy, push through the gap.’
‘I love you totally,’ said Tristan, as he slowly returned to earth.
Assuming sex was over for the day, Sharon galumphed into the bedroom, landing between the lovers, and was disappointed to be firmly told by Tristan that it had only just started.
Hazily watching his dark head between her legs, as his long lazily lapping tongue drove her through repeated hoops of ecstasy, Tab was inclined to agree with him. And those lovely endearments he kept murmuring in French. It’s like Sharon being talked to by me, she thought. She doesn’t understand what I’m saying, but she knows, by the tone of my voice, it’s adoring.
‘That was the best sex ever,’ she said, flopping back on to the pillow. Then, terrified it might only be a one-afternoon stand, she glanced sideways, trying to memorize his face for ever, noting the dark brown curls, straighter since the moisture had dried out of the earth, the big, slightly twisted mouth, the sallow complexion, now burnt dark gold, the long slightly snub nose, thick curly eyelashes that would never need mascara, black rings beneath the hollow eyes.
‘When you ’ave finish staring,’ said Tristan acidly, ‘I have first grey hairs at twenty-eight. It is abomination.’
‘You’ve been working too hard.’
‘No, I worry you will never love me. Oh, my angel, what a lovely life we’ll have together.’
Tab froze. ‘D’you mean that?’
‘Absolument.’ Tristan took her hand, tempted to slide off her wedding ring. ‘James Benson wanted me to call your father.’
Fuck, he’d ruined everything!
‘Don’t interfere.’ Tab hissed. ‘It’s nothing to do with James! Christ, why is everyone—?’
‘Not everyone, hush.’ Gradually, he calmed her.
‘I can’t cope if Daddy hangs up on me. I don’t want to lose face.’
‘No-one would want to lose one as beautiful as yours.’ Tristan ran a finger down her cheek.
‘Am I really beautiful?’
‘Oh, my darling, you are also genius,’ he added lovingly. ‘I never had horses more better organized on a shoot.’
‘Will you tell Isa?’ Tab sat up in excitement. ‘He thinks I’m a total failure.’
‘Isa’s over.’
‘I know I go on about him,’ confessed Tab, ‘but he’s tougher to kick than the booze. I don’t love him but him having this other woman hurt almost more than losing the baby.’
‘My poor darling.’ Tristan kissed her forehead, then her Greek nose and then her luscious, loving mouth. ‘We will have lots of kids. But I will always adore you the most.’
Kissing his fingers, tasting traces of herself, Tab examined his signet ring. On it was engraved a snake coiled round a column.
‘I can’t read the motto.’
‘Basically it say, “Don’t disturb the Montigny snake, or he’ll come and get you.” He can see off a Black Cobra any day.’
Having taken Sharon for a run, Tristan left Tab, when she was nearly falling asleep. He had missed a half-day’s filming, and had several hours’ work to do.
‘Come back later,’ begged Tab.
‘If you promise not to wake up.’
Suddenly thunder rumbled round the valley like a roused guard dog.
‘Poor James, he’ll be terrified,’ said Tab.
‘Poor Lucy.’ Tristan thought of her anguished, disintegrating face in the canteen.
Outside the front door, white rose petals snowed down on them. As he kissed her goodbye he felt his soul, like those of the heretics, being drawn up to heaven.
Bats flitted across a rising yellow moon, as he floated back to Valhalla trying to keep the silly grin off his face. Overhead, proud and defiant, strode the constellation of Hercules. As Tabitha loved him, he could dispatch thirteen hundred labours. Suddenly he was singing, ‘I am Carlos, and I love you, yes, I love you,’ at the top of his voice. He was so happy he walked straight under a ladder.
On his bed lay a fax of his interview with The Times. He had been very taken by and had got mildly tight over lunch with Valerie Grove, who’d written it. She had described him as the complete Prince Charmant, with naturally aristocratic good manners and a haircut that could only have come from Paris.
Tristan smiled. He must show Lucy that bit.
The piece mentioned his ‘close friendship’ with Claudine Lauzerte, and said that the word on the street about The Lily in the Valley was that it would be both smash hit and artistic triumph.
‘Is This the Greatest Montigny of Them All?’ said the headline. Below was a big picture of himself. Flanking it were smaller pictures of Étienne, and Tristan’s older brothers, including an incredibly rare snapshot of Laurent, who had looked so like Che Guevara.
‘One reason I make Don Carlos’, Tristan was quoted as saying, ‘was my brother Laurent die twenty-eight years ago, blown up in Chad fighting injustice, like Posa. His death broke my father’s heart. I wanted to give him my own memorial.’
Étienne would have gone ballistic at the mention of Laurent. Tristan hoped the crescendo-ing of thunder wasn’t his father smashing furniture in heaven.
But it seemed a lovely piece. Perhaps he was being too harsh on the press in Don Carlos. They weren’t all bad apples like Beattie Johnson. But his head was too full of Tabitha.