‘Rather like a selling plate,’ grumbled Baby.
The Prince of Darkness was fine when he was galloping across country, but he lashed out at crowds, particularly at Pushy Galore, who had shoved her way to the front of the foot-followers. Pushy was livid and promptly reported the Prince and Tab to the union. This may have been due to jealousy.
Every time Tab appeared on the set, all one could see was technicians tripping over cables and camera tracks and cannoning into each other as they cricked their necks for a third and fourth glance. Even Oscar, the director of photography, woke up.
‘Talk about the return of Hale-Bopp,’ he sighed, as Tab and The Engineer flew past, blonde hair, grey mane and tail flying.
After Tab, the most eye-catching sight on the set was Hype-along Cassidy, the Press Officer, who had ginger sideboards and, even in winter, whisked about in flowered kipper ties and flared pastel suits. ‘Seventies is my trademark,’ he was always saying. ‘If you’re different you’re remembered.’
Hype-along knew more people than Griselda, but in twenty-five highly successful years he had never met a bunch whose vanity and caprice exceeded the cast of Don Carlos. Not only did they want coverage in the posh papers, but also double-page spreads in the tabloids praising their artistry but not mentioning their sex lives.
On the extras’ second day, Hype-along wheeled in the Sunday Express, whose photographer was having an adventurous time leaping out of the way of The Prince of Darkness and snapping the hunt as they streamed down a woodland ride.
‘So pleasant to have a break in Paradise,’ announced Hermione, slowing down to bow to the Express photographer as she and Colin Milton cantered decorously past. ‘It’s so peaceful here.’
Colin’s chestnut mare had furry legs like a feminist. It was lucky he was hanging on to her mane for grim death for next moment they were overtaken by a yelling peril.
‘Move it, you fuckers!’ shouted Tabitha. ‘You’re hunting, not pulling a coffin, and for God’s sake sit up, Grandma,’ she added to Hermione, ‘and shorten your reins.’
Hermione turned puce. ‘To think I sang at her wedding for nothing! I’m not surprised Isaac’s fed up with her already. I also think she’s been at the hip flask.’
Wolfie thought the same thing, and finding a half-empty bottle of vodka in the hollow of a large oak tree, emptied it on to the grass.
Tristan, meanwhile, knew exactly what space he wanted between horses and, in the politest possible way, made Hermione, Flora, Colin and the hunt return to their starting-point at the top of the ride again and again.
They were at last achieving a perfect take, galloping out of the wood with the sun shining and ivy glittering like chain-mail on the trees, when Tab came scorching across their bows, screaming, ‘Cut, cut, cut.’
Horses and riders slithered to a halt.
But before Tab could weigh into them in front of a flabbergasted crew, an outraged Tristan and an apoplectic Bernard, Wolfie had hurtled up, caught The Engineer’s reins and yanked him to a halt.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’
With his furious, flushed face, his gleaming blond hair, and his plunging horse, he looked just like St George. But his indigo eyes blazed like Rannaldini’s.
‘Hermione’s toes were pointing down like Darcey Bussell,’ yelled back Tab, ‘and Spanish ambassadors don’t cling on to their horses’ manes. And who let Hermione carry a hunting whip without a lash? It’s so naff. And if she wants to wear a red coat, why doesn’t she get a job at Butlin’s?’
‘You’ve just wrecked a perfectly good take!’
‘My reputation is at stake,’ countered Tab, who was getting thoroughly above herself. ‘If this goes on, I’ll have to take my name off the credits.’
‘After all your forty-eight-hour experience,’ said a scornful Wolfie, thinking how pale and unhealthy she looked in the spring sunshine. Then, seeing the first assistant director puffing up the hill, he added, ‘And you’ll bloody well apologize to Bernard.’
‘I will not, you bloody Alfred Hitler.’
‘Alfred?’ Wolfie raised an incredulous blond eyebrow.
Realizing she’d goofed, Tab had to recover herself. ‘Adolf’s much more evil elder brother,’ she said haughtily. ‘And don’t you dare take the piss out of me.’
‘Can we get on?’ said a chilling voice, which promptly sent the sun in.
It was Rannaldini.
‘You’re out of order, Wolfgang. Tabitha was quite right to halt the film. That whip’, he added bitchily, ‘is wrong. Hermione had a lash yesterday and The Prince of Darkness should be wearing my saddlecloth. Very black mark for continuity, Simone.’
‘Not if he’s being ridden by a French princess,’ said Wolfie defiantly. ‘Your saddlecloth incorporates the colours of the German and Italian flags,’ and swinging his horse round, he cantered off to tell the hunt to go back up the hill again.
How truly kind of Wolfie to defy his terrifying father for my sake, thought tiny Simone tearfully.
To avoid more chaos, Tristan filmed the hounds on a separate day. The Cotchester Hunt, pulled out by Rupert, had been replaced by a splendidly sixteenth-century assortment of wolfhounds, greyhounds, salukis and lurchers. But being gaze hounds, who chased what they saw rather than what they smelled, they ignored the extra, drenched in aniseed, who’d replaced the stag, and tore instead after the camera moving on its dolly. Soon Ogborne, clutching his flower-pot hat, Valentin, in his new English brogues, and Oscar, who’d nodded off against a copper beech, could be seen belting off into the wood in terror.
James the lurcher, who’d been signed up as a hound, immediately rushed back to Lucy, where the other Valhalla dogs, Sharon, Trevor and Tabloid, Rannaldini’s Rottweiler, who’d all ploughed the audition, proceeded to rubbish him out of jealousy.
‘Cut down the tallest puppy,’ said Flora, who was in such hysterics, she fell off Audrey.
Despite the traumas, wonderful work was being done. Hermione’s long, one-noted ‘Yes’, when she agreed to marry Philip rather than Carlos, had everyone in tears. And at the end of two and a half weeks, the first, and probably most taxing, act was in the can, the buds could feel free to burst open in Cathedral Close, and the wild flowers to throw off their blanket of artificial snow.
Action would now move inside to the dungeons and to Alpheus’s bedroom scene. Alpheus, Granny, Chloe, Hermione, Mikhail and Baby would be needed, but no horses or Flora, so she and Tabitha could have a break.
But there was no respite for Lucy. Her make-up had been inspired, except when Tristan popped into her caravan and her hands started shaking. When he watched the rushes, he realized even more what a treasure he had found. Flora with her short back and sides looked disturbingly androgynous. With miraculous shading, Baby had lost all his puppy fat — he was also acting everyone off the screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off him.
The only person not ravished by the rushes was Hermione. She was in the habit of pestering her agent, Howie Denston, twenty times a day, even ordering him to ring up and tell her chauffeur to turn down the car radio when she was being driven the half-mile from River House to Valhalla.
Now she told Howie to tell Tristan she could only film in the afternoons, when her big brown eyes were fully open. She also sacked her make-up artist and insisted on having Lucy.
Lucy was then summoned to Hermione’s caravan for a glass of very cheap South African sherry as the great diva lay stretched out on a bed, a pad steeped in witch-hazel over her eyes.
‘As I’m playing a beautiful young princess in this film,’ announced Hermione, ‘I thought it fitting at first to employ a beautiful young make-up artist, who would be au fait with the latest trends. While you’re here, Lucy dear, could you peel those grapes, and pop them into my mouth? Now I realize I was wrong.’ Hermione sounded as though she was going over to Rome. ‘Far better to go for a mature, older woman, like yourself, who knows the ropes. You mustn’t be fazed, Lucy. I have every faith in you.’