Score! (3 page)

‘How would you like your testicles shrivelled by radiation?’ she yelled.

‘Sounds interesting,’ murmured Rannaldini, closing the window as her furious face disappeared in a tidal wave of fans.

‘I’m getting a bodyguard,’ he complained, as a couple of doormen finally dragged him and Tristan through the stage door.

Tristan was unfazed, particularly when Rannaldini, while donning the splendour of white tie and tails, offered him a birthday glass of Krug. All down the passage, singers could be heard warming up.

A white gardenia in a glass box for Rannaldini to slot into his buttonhole was delivered to the Maestro’s dressing room. Most of the flowers arriving were for Cecilia Rannaldini, his second wife, who was singing Eboli, and who now could be heard screaming, ‘When will people learn I only like
red
roses,’ as she hurled everything else on to the floor.

Chic and svelte for a diva, Cecilia had done much to advance Rannaldini’s career, not least by changing her famous name to his. Having barged into the conductor’s room and smothered Tristan in kisses, she started rowing with Rannaldini in Italian.

Carlos was being sung by a plump, good-looking Italian, Franco Palmieri. Rannaldini’s latest discovery, an unknown South African called Hermione, was making her début as Elisabetta.

The packed audience was too old to interest Tristan but, with his chin resting on the front of the red velvet box, he gazed down in wonder at the glittering instruments in the pit. Opposite him were the cellos and behind them towered the double basses, red-gold as beeches in autumn. But once the action started on stage, and hunting horns heralded Hermione as Elisabetta riding in on a real grey horse, Tristan hardly noticed the orchestra. Hermione’s thick brown hair did indeed curl to her waist and he couldn’t take his eyes off her cleavage, which seemed to part like curtains whenever she hit a high note — and how gloriously she sang!

Rannaldini’s black hair was drenched with sweat, as his dark eyes sent laser beams to singer or musician so they responded almost without realizing it. Now he was smiling at Hermione, magicking increasingly beautiful sounds with a twitch of his baton.

Cecilia Rannaldini had a pure, clean voice. But, not realizing that shouting and crying all night can harm the vocal cords, Tristan thought she sounded very rough. She was, however, a great actress and, as she glared at Hermione, put him in mind of the wicked queen in
Snow White
. King Philip, on the other hand, was so stern and cold with his son Carlos, he reminded Tristan of his own father, Étienne.

Alone in the big box, he was also terrified by the Grand Inquisitor, blind, hooded, bent over his sticks like a black widow spider, and when the flames began to flicker round the poor bare feet of the heretics, Tristan leapt to his own feet screaming, ‘No, no they mustn’t burn,’ which was luckily drowned, by orchestra, church bells and chorus loudly praising God and the Inquisition.

Every role in
Don Carlos
is demanding, but it was the young Hermione who drew the most rapturous applause. Tristan clapped his hands until they were as pink as the carnations that cascaded down on her.

After more champagne and hugging, as people poured backstage to congratulate them, Rannaldini, Cecilia, Fat Franco, who’d sung Carlos, and Hermione swept Tristan off to the Ritz, where he still couldn’t speak for excitement. Everyone was sweet to him because Rannaldini made sure they knew both of his birthday and of his famous father.

The management presented him with a frothy fruit cocktail filled with coloured straws. Rannaldini, who never minded what the boy ate, allowed him to have lobster Thermidor with sizzling cheese topping, followed by blackcurrant sorbet.

Hermione, who’d changed into low-cut dark blue lace, presented him with one of her pink carnations. Then a birthday cake arrived with ten candles and he opened Rannaldini’s presents: a red leatherbound copy of Schiller’s play
Don Carlos
on which Verdi had based his opera, and a video camera. Tristan couldn’t stop saying thank you.

‘He already play cello very well,’ boasted Rannaldini.

‘Are you going to be a musician?’ asked Hermione.

‘No.’ Tristan blushed and stroked the camera. ‘I’m going to make films.’

He was too happy to absorb the tensions around him. Singers are often so fired up after a performance, they want sex instantly. Franco’s machismo was clearly dented because Hermione made it plain she was interested only in Rannaldini, which didn’t improve Cecilia’s temper either. She and Franco muttered that Hermione had deliberately hung on to notes to make them run out of breath. Nor would she have got such applause in the middle of Act V if Rannaldini hadn’t made an artificial pause. Fortunately Hermione didn’t understand Italian.

She was like one of his sister’s old-fashioned dolls, Tristan decided, who opened their big eyes and said, ‘Mama,’ although in Hermione’s case it seemed to be, ‘Me, me.’

‘Was it really twenty call-backs?’ she was now asking Rannaldini. ‘Pinch me, so I know I’m awake.’

She screamed as Rannaldini pinched her hard enough to leave white marks on her arm. Then he dropped his sleek dark head and kissed them better. Cecilia stormed out, pretending that their daughter Natasha had flu.

‘My wife is more neurotic than the horse in Act One,’ grumbled Rannaldini. ‘You should be specially interested in
Don Carlos
,’ he added to Tristan, ‘because one of your Montigny ancestors visited Spanish court during Philip II’s reign. And the Inquisition kill him, thinking he is spy. I wish I had smart relations like that,’ he went on fretfully.

‘I cannot imagine you not being smart, Signor Rannaldini,’ said a soft, dreamy voice, and they were engulfed in the sweetest scent, as though a bank of violets had bloomed behind them.

It was the only time Tristan had ever seen his godfather blush. Pausing at the table, in floating chiffon as violet as her eyes, a gently mocking smile playing over her full pink lips, was the most beautiful woman in France: Claudine Lauzerte, the actress wife of the opposition Minister for Cultural Affairs.

‘Madame Lauzerte!’

Jumping to his feet, Rannaldini kissed her hand. Then, clicking his fingers at the wine waiter, he beseeched her to join them.

‘I am leaving. I hear your
Don Carlos
is wonderful, with a sensational new star.’

Bowing and scraping like a brothel-keeper at the arrival of a royal stag party, Rannaldini introduced Hermione.

‘And this is Franco Palmieri who play Carlos.’

Leaping up, Franco sent several glasses and a vase of flowers flying.

Claudine Lauzerte had such impact that for the first five minutes people talked gibberish in her presence, so she turned to Tristan.

‘This is my godson, Tristan de Montigny, Étienne’s boy,’ explained Rannaldini proudly.

‘Ah.’ The violet eyes widened in amusement. ‘Your father often ask me to sit for him, but we are both always so busy.’ She glanced at the video camera. ‘You are obviously destined to become a director. With those looks, every leading lady will do exactly what you tell her.’

Noting Tristan’s pallor, his deep-set eyes mere hollows, she chided Rannaldini. ‘This poor child’s exhausted! Take him home.’

‘I will send you tickets,’ Rannaldini called after her.

‘I cannot believe I’ve met Claudine Lauzerte,’ babbled Hermione. ‘She must have had several facelifts to look so lovely.’

On the drive home, having jettisoned a furious Franco, Rannaldini pointed to a round white moon, retreating behind a lacing of dark clouds.

‘She is upstaged by your beauty,’ he told Hermione.

From the back seat, Tristan noticed Hermione continually holding her throat as if it were some precious jewel. Tomorrow he would take his new metal-detector, a present from Aunt Hortense, into the Bois and find her — and perhaps Claudine Lauzerte as well — a diamond ring.

Hermione was now complaining about lecherous conductors.

‘I was doing Rinaldo last week and Sir Rodney Macintosh, who must be over sixty, asked me to his room for a nightcap and greeted me wearing nothing but a pair of socks.’

Rannaldini wasn’t remotely shocked.

‘Eef you knee conductor in groin, he won’t give you more work. You must invent fiancé, preferably black belt at judo.’

Even such a fascinating subject couldn’t stop Tristan dropping off. Later he never knew if he’d dreamt it, or whether Rannaldini’s hand really had vanished into Hermione’s dark lace dress, and a moonlike breast emerged.

He did wake screaming, however, as Rannaldini pulled up outside the house and Étienne, still in his painter’s smock, loomed huger and blacker than the Grand Inquisitor in the doorway. Although his father cheered up when he saw Hermione, he curtly dispatched Tristan to bed.

‘And no ducking out of school tomorrow.’

‘Good night, little one,’ called Rannaldini, then, to irritate Étienne, ‘I’ll be up in a few minutes.’

In fact it was an hour, and Tristan again woke screaming from lobster-induced nightmare as another broad-shouldered black figure loomed over him.

‘It all ’appen four hundred years ago,’ said Rannaldini as he tucked the boy in. ‘You mustn’t ’ave bad dreams.’

Looking round the bleak attic room, seeing the video camera, the red leatherbound copy of Schiller’s
Don Carlos
and Hermione’s carnation in a tooth-mug on the bedside table, he picked up the silver frame, containing the only photograph of Tristan’s mother, Delphine, in the house.

‘So beautiful, a little like Madame Lauzerte, don’t you think?’

‘Will she sit for Papa?’ asked Tristan hopefully.

‘I doubt it. She is very pure lady — her nickname is Madame Vierge.’

‘Did they really burn people alive in those days?’

‘They do today with electric chairs and bombs. That’s how your brother, Laurent, died,’ said Rannaldini.

But the terror in Tristan’s eyes was in case his father walked in and heard the forbidden name. Such had been Étienne’s heartbreak, no allusion to Laurent was allowed in the house.

‘Why didn’t King Philip like Carlos?’ Tristan asked wistfully.

‘Fathers and sons.’ Rannaldini brushed back the boy’s hair. ‘Philip was jealous, Carlos had whole life ahead of him — to pull the girls.’

‘Can I work for you when I grow up?’ murmured Tristan.

‘One day we will make great film of
Don Carlos
together,’ promised Rannaldini.

Eighteen spectacularly successful years later, on a wet, windy, late-October morning, Sir Roberto Rannaldini gazed down on the valley of Paradise, often described as the jewel of the Cotswolds.

Rannaldini owned many splendid houses, but the brooding, secretive Paradise Abbey, which he had somewhat hubristically renamed Valhalla after the home of the gods in Teutonic mythology, was the one he loved most.

From his study on the first floor he could admire, albeit through mist and rain, his tennis courts, swimming-pool, hangar for jet and helicopter, lovingly-tended gardens and racehorses, grazing in fields sweeping down to his lake and the river Fleet, which ran along the bottom of the valley.

To his left, coiled up like a sleeping snake, was the famous Valhalla Maze. To the right, deep in the woods, lurked the watchtower, where he edited, composed and seduced. Beyond, disappearing into the mist, was the ravishing mill house, belonging to Hermione Harefield, his mistress for the last eighteen years.

But even as Rannaldini gloated over his valley, the dying fires of autumn seemed to symbolize his own decline. For the first time ever, his massive royalty cheque was down. Last Sunday, when he was conducting at the Appleton piano competition, his favoured candidate and latest conquest, the ravishing Natalia Philipovna, had been beaten into second place, despite intense lobbying, by Rannaldini’s detested stepson, Marcus Campbell-Black.

The same evening, Rannaldini learnt he had failed in his bid to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, who had accompanied the finalists. As an ultimate humiliation at the party afterwards, the first horn had hit Rannaldini across the room — his fall had been broken only by the pudding trolley and the flaccid curves of a grisly crone from the Arts Council. The newspapers had had a field day. Rannaldini shuddered.

Like Philip II of Spain, who had exhausted himself and his nation’s coffers trying to hold his Habsburg Empire together, Rannaldini was also learning by bitter experience that his vast kingdom could be maintained only by the crippling expense of waging war on all fronts. He was currently engaged in law-suits with orchestras, unions, sacked musicians, mistresses and ex-wives.

Nineteen months ago, merely to spite his great enemy, the very rich and arrogant Rupert Campbell-Black, whom he believed had orchestrated the break-up of his third marriage, Rannaldini had made a catastrophic fourth marriage to Rupert’s neurotic ex-wife, Helen. In return for his habitual infidelity, Helen was now busy squandering his millions and, because Rannaldini was only five foot six, deliberately dwarfing him in public by wearing very high heels.

Rannaldini was sad that his two eldest children from earlier marriages, Wolfgang and Natasha, had left home after frightful family rows. But, saddest of all, he knew his music was suffering. Accusing Rannaldini of blandness in the
Daily Telegraph
last Monday, Norman Lebrecht had suggested he stopped settling scores and started studying them again. Rannaldini might outwardly be the greatest conductor in the world, with orchestras in New York, Berlin and Tokyo, but he was poor in spirit and horribly alone.

Outside, rain swept across the woods like ghost armies marching on Valhalla. Although his office was tropically warm and the windows and doors were closed, an icy wind suddenly rustled all the papers and the fire died in the grate with a hiss. On the chimney-piece, a gilt and ormolu clock of Apollo driving the horses of the sun chimed twelve noon.