Jilly Cooper - Score!

As they broke for breath, she flung her arms round his neck. ‘You are the most blissfully gorgeous man who ever walked this earth, and I’m going to love, cherish and adore you for ever.’

‘If you don’t, I shall be horribly jealous,’ said Tristan. ‘Even of Pierre Lapin.’ He fingered Peter Rabbit. ‘Look at lucky him, lying against those wonderful breasts.’

‘How d’you know they’re wonderful?’ mumbled a blushing Lucy.

‘I have Hype-along’s picture in my wallet. I show it you later. But first you must have this.’

Reaching down to his coat which had fallen on the floor, he took a little black velvet box from the inside pocket. ‘Aunt Hortense leave me ring, which once belong to Marie Antoinette. You give me back my name, Lucy, now I want you to share it with me.’

Lucy’s hands were trembling so violently, Tristan had to open the box. Inside, like mistletoe berries waiting for kissing lovers, gleamed three pearls.

As a tear splashed on one of them, Tristan said shakily, ‘I would be safest, happiest guy in world, if you would wear it always.’

They were brought back to earth by a great snore rending the air. With his future assured, James felt safe to fall asleep.

The police had finally allowed Rannaldini to be buried in huge pomp. Unwilling to attend the funeral, Tristan came alone to Valhalla to pay his last respects. It was a bitterly cold, dark afternoon: the east wind howled and lashed the naked trees. A ‘For Sale’ sign swung dismally outside the main gates.

Tristan went straight to the graveyard. Here, amid a sea of flowers and higgledy-piggledy ivy-clad graves, soared a splendid white marble headstone, on which had already been inscribed the words: ‘Roberto Rannaldini, Maestro and Composer, 1949–1996.’

As he stood in the fading light, Tristan relived the past year, remembering Baby serenading Hermione in the snow, Tabitha screaming at the hunt, Granny silencing the rabble with such terrifying authority, Alpheus singing with such kingly anguish, and Mikhail as he lay dying reducing everyone to tears.

Tristan thought of Simone, Wolfie and Bernard working themselves to the bone, of Valentin and Oscar creating radiance even when they seemed at their most languid and inattentive, of dearest Lucy, always comforting and smiling, of Sexton giving him full rein and heroically raising the money, and the rest of the crew backing him all the way despite their grumbling.

But without Rannaldini it would never have happened. Without Rannaldini’s kindness and continual encouragement in the early days he would never have emerged from the shadow of Étienne’s disdain and become a director. And what would Rannaldini, who had never settled for less than perfection, think of his film, which was now in a little black oblong box for present and future generations to judge?

More important than winning any Oscars, Tristan hoped that, whatever form or being he was now, Rannaldini would be proud.

Strange that one narrow grave could contain so much vitality, strange that so much tragedy and passion should be contained in one small, black videotape, which Tristan now laid on Rannaldini’s grave. On top he placed a white gardenia.

But as he stood in silence, he could have sworn a pale violet light, like a torch beam or a peacock butterfly left over from summer, landed on the grave, and danced for a second before disappearing into the earth. He shook his head. It must have been a trick of the light.

Leaving the graveyard, he wandered past Meredith’s cuckoo clock lying upside down in the park. The patch of yellow grass beneath Lucy’s caravan was green once more, the love-in-a-mist in her abandoned window-box turned to seed pods. Tristan put a couple in his pocket.

Looking over the valley with the ghosts of the past swirling around him, he was overwhelmed by sorrow that Don Carlos was over and Rannaldini gone for ever. But as he walked swiftly back to the car park he felt only joy as he switched on his telephone and dialled his future:

‘May I speak to Lucy de Montigny, please?’

In 1985 Robin Baird-Smith, then of Constable the publisher, sent me to Death Valley to write a short book about Patrick Lichfield photographing three ravishing nude models for the 1986 Unipart calendar. As well as Patrick’s crew, there was a second film crew videoing the shoot for television. Everyone was obsessed with their own agenda. With temperatures hitting 140°F, the rows were as pyrotechnic as the high jinks. Returning home a wreck, but eternally grateful to everyone involved for such riotous fun, I vowed one day to write a novel about a film crew on location.

The result, fourteen years later, is Score!: the subject no longer a calendar shoot but the filming of Verdi’s darkest opera, Don Carlos, with the resultant tensions leading to murder. Only when I had embarked on the story did I realize that in addition to filming and recording I would need to research opera and the ways of singers as well as the infinitely complicated police procedure of solving a murder. This consequently means a huge number of people to thank for their help. Singers, and those who work with them, seem to have particularly large and generous hearts.

On the filming front, I must start by thanking my dear friend Adrian Rowbotham, an independent director, who not only talked to me for hours, but later nobly ploughed through the manuscript for errors. I am also eternally grateful to the charismatic Peter Maniura of BBC Television, who was brilliant on directing the film of Dido and Aeneas, and the ebullient Mick Csaky of Antelope Films, who rolled up to lunch with a complete and marvellously funny brief on how to fund the film of an opera. Mick also introduced me to the divine soprano Susan Daniel, who over many meetings shared her singing experiences, particularly of starring in the film of Carmen with Placido Domingo.

Brilliant filming advice was given me by Ray Marshall, Chloë and David Hargreaves and Alison Sterling of Fat Chance Productions, Alan Kaupe, Clifford Haydn-Tovey, James Swann, Nick Handel, Bill and Susannah Franklyn and, in particular, Irving Teitelbaum and Rob Knights, who allowed me to range freely on the set of Mosley, the excellent series they produced and directed for ITV. During this time I had terrific conversations with actors Jonathan Cake, Jemma Redgrave and Roger May, as well as Chris O’Dell, the director of photography, Rudi Buckle, sound, Charlotte Walter, wardrobe, Heather Storr, continuity, Shelagh Pymm, publicity, Patricia Kirkman, make-up, and an ace caterer called Melanie.

My heroine in Score! is a make-up girl, always the still centre of any shoot, so I would therefore especially like to thank all the make-up artists over the years who soothed and transformed me, as well as beguiling me with anecdotes. They include Maggie Hunt, Valerie Macdonald, Jacqui Jefferies, Becky Challis, Rozelle Parry, Sally Holden, Clayton Howard, Juliette Mayer, Sarah Bee, Jenny Sharpe and Celia Hunter.

Several chapters in Score! are set in France. Here I am deeply indebted to star journalist Suzanne Lowry as well as my French publisher, Valérie-Anne Giscard d’Estaing, for thinking up glamorous names; Jonathan Eastwood for being brilliant on French law; Jill de Monpezat for kindly reading the French chapters for accuracy; Caterina Krucker for correcting my French; and my brother and sister-in-law, Timothy and Angela Sallitt, who lived for ten years in a stunning house in the Tarn, and who have been a constant source of information and inspiration.

On the music front, I am quite unable to express sufficient gratitude to Bill Holland, head of Polygram Classics and Jazz, easily the nicest and most generous man in the record business, who not only lent me numerous books and plied me with the relevant CDs, but also endlessly answered my questions, waded through the chapters on recording and finally produced a glorious double CD of the music featured in Score!

Bill also invited me to a miraculous production of Berg’s Lulu at Glyndebourne. Again I am extremely grateful to the then General Director Anthony Whitworth-Jones for letting me wander everywhere, and to Humphrey Burton and Sonia Lovett and their crew at NVC Arts, who were filming Lulu for Channel 4, for allowing me to attend production meetings and sit in the control room and beside the cameramen during the performance.

Going back to the seventies, I must thank my friend Guelda Waller for first taking me to Don Carlos at the Royal Opera House, thus igniting a passion, which has grown with the years. It was therefore a colossal thrill to be allowed to sit in on Phillips Classics recording sessions of Don Carlos in Walthamstow Assembly Rooms in 1996. I would especially like to thank the executive producer, Clive Bennett; the legendary Christopher Raeburn, who produced the record; the mighty Bernard Haitink; the sublime chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the beguiling language coach, Maria Cleva; the endearingly laid-back orchestra manager, Clifford Corbett; and the magnificent cast, including Richard Margison, Robert Lloyd, Galina Gorchakova, Robin Leggate and Roderick Williams. I also had particular help from Patricia Haitink, Jan Burnett, the co-ordinator, James Jones, in charge of publicity, and the PA James Ross, a rising young conductor, who talked to me for hours about the opera and made some excellent suggestions when the book was in synopsis stage.