Opera films were seldom big box office. Why, therefore, had these vastly high-earning singers committed themselves when they knew what purgatory it was to work with Rannaldini?
The answer was Tristan de Montigny, who by driving himself into the ground to win some recognition from his father, Étienne, was now one of the hottest directors in the world. With his ravishing English-speaking version of Manzoni’s The Betrothed tipped to win several Oscars, he had spent the summer filming Balzac’s The Lily in the Valley with Claudine Lauzerte. The word on the street was that, despite being over fifty, ‘Madame Vierge’ had never looked more beautiful or acted better.
Success with actors of both sexes had been helped by Tristan’s wonderfully romantic looks: the model whom Calvin Klein loved best. At six foot two, he was too thin, and his gold curls had darkened to burnt umber, but the peat-brown, heavily shadowed eyes, the cheekbones higher than the Eiffel Tower, and the big mouth, usually smiling but of incredible sadness in repose, made everyone long to make him happy.
But it was a mistake to be fooled by Tristan’s gentleness: he could be both manipulative and monomaniac in getting the film he wanted.
He and Rannaldini were both so successful that they seldom managed to meet except for an hour snatched at an airport or a midnight dinner after a concert, but they had retained their affection for one another and their dream of working together, which at last was going to be realized.
But, sadly, too late to please Étienne. All the newspapers littering Rannaldini’s desk reported that France’s greatest painter since Monet was dying but refusing to go to hospital. Rannaldini was tempted to cancel tonight’s Barbican concert and fly out to bid his old friend farewell, but he’d get more coverage if he waited until the funeral. He couldn’t spare the time for both.
He felt a surge of hatred as he noticed an intensely glamorous photograph in Le Monde of Rupert Campbell-Black embracing his son Marcus before putting him on a plane to Moscow. If Rupert was relinquishing one child, he might consider a reconciliation with another, Marcus’s younger sister, the ravishing nineteen-year-old Tabitha. Rupert loathed Rannaldini so much that he had disinherited both Marcus and Tabitha for attending their mother’s wedding to Rannaldini.
Tabitha, however, like Tristan, was one of the few people who liked Rannaldini — not least because, when she became his stepdaughter, he had given her a large allowance and bought her a wonderful horse called The Engineer. But within a few weeks of marrying Rannaldini, Helen had caught him leering through a two-way mirror at Tabitha undressing, and packed her off to an eventing yard in America. There Tabitha was winning competitions and was already spoken of as an Olympic possible. She was also making friends.
‘I’ve been invited to fifteen Thanksgiving parties and I’m going to all of them,’ she had announced, in her last letter home.
On the other hand, she missed Rupert dreadfully. She had always been his favourite child, the one who rode as fearlessly as he did, and, like Rupert, she had hitherto dismissed her brother Marcus as a wimp.
Knowing it would unhinge her, Rannaldini played his second trump card, faxing out all the cuttings of Marcus being outed before winning the Appleton piano competition and being reunited with an overjoyed Rupert. Rupert had totally accepted that Marcus was gay and in love with the great Russian dancer, Alexei Nemerovsky. He had even flippantly told a group of reporters at Heathrow that he was looking forward to meeting Nemerovsky, and felt he was ‘gaining a daughter rather than losing a son’.
Silly, silly Rupert, thought Rannaldini, as he filled his jade pen with emerald-green ink to scribble a covering letter.
‘Dearest Tabitha, I know you will want to share your mother’s joy that your brother is both a national hero and reconciled with your father.’
Smirking, Rannaldini handed it to his new PA, Miss Bussage, who looked like being his third trump card. After only a month she had transformed his life, keeping track of children, wives, finances and his gruelling schedule. Nor did she have any compunction about feeding pleading love notes, demands from charities and bad reviews (after the author’s name had been put on the hit list) straight into the shredder.
Rannaldini dreamed of Miss Bussage giving him a bed review:
‘You were very boring in the sack last night, Maestro, please do better this evening.’
In her forties, Miss Bussage had the look of a well-regulated musk ox, with small suspicious eyes and dark, heavy hair that flicked up, sixties-style, like two horns. Her thick body was redeemed by a splendid bosom and rather good legs. Like musk oxen, she was also able to survive the arctic climate of Rannaldini’s rages, and gave off a strong, musky scent in the rutting season.
Friendly one day, downright rude the next, which Rannaldini, used to sycophancy, thought wonderful, she had now picked up his private telephone, which none of his other staff would touch at pain of thumbscrew.
‘Marcel Dupont for you.’
Dupont was Étienne de Montigny’s lawyer. He had grown rich over the years but had had his work cut out, extricating the great man from scrapes and marriages, and preserving his vast fortune.
‘What news?’ asked Rannaldini, seizing the receiver.
‘The worst.’ Dupont’s voice trembled. ‘Étienne died an hour ago.’
Glancing up as Apollo’s clock struck one, Rannaldini crossed himself. Death must have been at noon when the fire died in the grate and Don Juan in Étienne’s painting cried out in anguish. ‘I am so sorry,’ Rannaldini’s voice dropped an octave. ‘I trust the end was peaceful?’
‘Did Étienne ever do anything peacefully?’ asked Dupont. ‘Like Hercules, he battled to the end. He wanted to see another sunset. I know how busy you are, Maestro, but…’
‘I will certainly be at the funeral.’
Then Dupont confessed it had been Étienne’s dying wish that Rannaldini should join Tristan’s three older brothers carrying the coffin.
‘But surely Tristan…’ began Rannaldini.
Dupont sighed. ‘Even in death. I can trust your discretion.’
‘Of course,’ lied Rannaldini.
French law insists that three-quarters of any estate is divided between the children of the blood, with whole shares going to legitimate children and half shares to any born out of wedlock. Tristan, therefore, would automatically inherit several million. But the law also stipulates that the fourth quarter of a man’s estate can be divided as he chooses.
‘Étienne itemized everything for children, mistresses, friends, wives and servants,’ said Dupont bleakly, ‘but he left nothing personal to Tristan, not even a pencil drawing or a paintbrush. Why did he hate the poor boy so much?’
‘Poor boy indeed.’ Rannaldini was shocked. ‘I will ring him.’
‘Please do — he’s devastated, and the end was dreadful. I hope this story doesn’t leak out. Anyway, while you’re on, Rannaldini, Étienne left you two of his greatest paintings, Abelard and Héloïse and The Nymphomaniac. Both are on exhibition in New York.’
Together they were worth several million. Not such a bad day, after all, thought Rannaldini.
2
Having witnessed Étienne’s extremely harrowing death, Tristan had immediately fled back to his own flat in La Rue de Varenne, trying to blot out the horror and despair with work. He had been on the brink of making the one film his father might have rated, because it was with Rannaldini. Now it was too late.