‘With a fleek knife,’ said Boris slamming down the receiver.

Although Rannaldini felt it prudent to soft-pedal his affaire with Rachel, he found himself more and more addicted to the demanding crosspatch. Her ability to massage essential oils into all parts of his body was beyond anything. Flora, who’d been trailing them in her father’s car, had also noticed Rachel’s increasing dominance over the play and was in a dangerous kamikaze mood.

Only Marigold was more miserable than Flora. She had wrapped all her Christmas presents, over-loaded the deep freeze, despatched her cards and decorated the house so early that the mistletoe was already shrivelling under the huge chandelier that was no longer switched on as it wasted precious energy. Larry was behaving in an increasingly suspicious fashion, coming home later and later, pouncing on the telephone, then shutting the door or going out to his car when he rang out, rising early to intercept the post and eating nothing.

In earlier years he had relished taking part in the Christmas play and never missed a rehearsal, conducting business in the wings on his mobile. This year, in the plum part of the innkeeper, he had hardly showed up. Marigold was sure he must be back with Nikki or having an affaire with Rachel who was looking utterly radiant. Marigold felt she was having a leg broken and reset without an anaesthetic.


47



Tempers were not improved during the dress rehearsal by the arrival of a film crew with a sleek, glamorous but very aggressive director from Venturer Television called Cameron Cook. The continual stopping to re-adjust cameras and microphones threw the entire cast — even such old hands as Georgie and Hermione. Lights fused, lines were forgotten, cues missed. Cameron decided to put two cameras on either side of the hall and one up in the minstrels’ gallery from which the vicar, as the Angel Gabriel, would descend to address Mary and later the shepherds. The technicians stood around yawning, looking bored and tripping over Mr Brimscombe as he peered into the chapel, which had been turned into a women’s changing room, while he pretended to fiddle with the fuse box.

Lysander had taken refuge at the back of the stalls. He was laboriously ploughing through a really sad piece in the Express about Rupert Campbell-Black and his wife who had just lost a test-tube baby at four months and were both utterly devastated.

Oh, poor Rupert, thought Lysander, and his wife was so beautiful and not much older than himself. He wished he could do something to help them.

The rows on stage were getting worse.

‘Don’t forget not to look at the camera,’ Hermione was hissing at the shepherds.

‘With so many cameras one can hardly help it,’ said Meredith fretfully.

The star fused again.

‘If it blows on the night, Larry can leap on to the roof and flash his medallion,’ said Flora.

‘If he turns up at all,’ said Natasha bitchily. ‘Talk about a never-in keeper.’

Marigold burst into tears again. Dropping a huge bunch of holly, Kitty ran to comfort her.

‘Lully, lully, breast is best,’ sang Hermione, nearly taking the vaulted roof off.

‘You can’t say that shit,’ said Cameron Cook, consulting her script. ‘And what’s a Christmas tree doing in the stable? They weren’t invented in those days. And why isn’t it decorated?’

‘Because it’s demeaning for trees to be hung with baubles,’ explained Rachel earnestly.

‘For God’s sake,’ snarled Cameron. ‘Now Holy Joe’s arrived, we better go back and do the Annunciation.’

Up in the gallery like some vast white bird in his Cavendish House nightgown, the vicar cleared his throat and straightened his halo.

‘Hi, Charismatic Mary,’ he called out in his fluting voice. ‘I’ve dropped in from heaven to tell you your pregnancy test is positive.’

‘How wonderful,’ cried Hermione, gazing down at her Harrods lily. ‘Joseph will be absolutely, absolutely—’ She turned to Meredith who, instead of prompting, was gazing at a butch cameraman.

‘Joseph will be absolutely?’ repeated Hermione, snapping her fingers.

‘Gobsmacked,’ suggested Lysander, who was still reading about Rupert.

‘Absolutely delighted.’ Meredith had found his place.

‘I’m afraid Joseph isn’t the father,’ said the vicar as he slowly descended on a wire attached to a buckling beam in the ceiling.

Hermione bowed her head. ‘It could be no other.’

‘It is — God Almighty!’ screamed the vicar as he landed on a free-range hen.

‘Well, I know Joseph will make a caring stepfather,’ said Hermione, launching loudly into ‘Behold a Virgin Shall Conceive’.

‘Stop, stop! Who wrote this shit?’ shouted Cameron Cook.

‘This bit, Handel and Jennings,’ said Bob helpfully. ‘The rest of it is Georgie’s.’

‘It is not,’ stormed Georgie. ‘Not a line of mine’s left in.’

‘I’d take your name off it sharpish then,’ advised Cameron.

A diversion was created by the arrival of Ferdie who had dropped in to discover if Natasha still had the power to hurt him and why Marigold’s last cheque for Lysander’s services had bounced twice and Georgie’s retainer not been paid at all. As Larry was still AWOL, Ferdie was promptly co-opted to play the innkeeper.

‘You’ve lost even more weight,’ said Lysander, coming through the big door at the back, leading Arthur — looking very smart in a jewelled bridle.

‘I’ve been working out and cleaning up,’ said Ferdie, giving Arthur a Polo. ‘The gym is packed with bored housewives walking very slowly around the running track so their make-up doesn’t run. I’m telling all of them I’m about to be sent to the Gulf and pulling everything in sight.’

‘Here’s the script.’ Bob handed it to Ferdie. ‘I don’t think Larry’s up to it, even if he does show. It’s not a huge part, but key. Can you learn it by tomorrow? Ad lib if you like.’

‘Ferdie was brilliant as Shylock at school,’ Lysander told Kitty.

‘How are you anyway?’ he asked Ferdie.

‘Exhausted with electricity privatization, I’ve been stagging all week.’

‘I’ve been staggering all week, moving scenery,’ said Lysander. ‘But Rupert Campbell-Black’s turning up tomorrow and I know he and Arthur are going to get on. Aren’t you, boy?’ He gave Arthur a hug.

‘What’s happening?’ hissed Ferdie, drawing Lysander aside. ‘No-one’s paying. Not a bean out of Marigold, nor Georgie. If they don’t cough up soon, we should cut our losses and pull out. The Brazil job’s still open — and that’s serious dosh.’

But Lysander was watching Kitty who had climbed up a ladder to put pieces of holly around a huge oil of one of Rannaldini’s alleged ancestors. She was wearing the black leggings and huge black-and-purple sloppy jersey he’d bought her in Way-In. He’d never seen her in trousers before. There was something infinitely touching about her plump little legs. As she stretched up he could see three-inch gaps of white calf above her Father Christmas socks. He suddenly longed to touch them. Just as he always wanted to stroke Arthur, Jack and Maggie, who was now chewing up a stray shepherd’s crook, he told himself firmly.

Putting down the Express he walked over to hold her ladder.

‘It’s Lysander, not electricity, who ought to be privatized,’ drawled Flora. ‘Having exhausted the other ladies of Paradise, he’s moved on to Kitty.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Rachel, Hermione and Natasha in unison. With their deep involvement in Rannaldini and Lysander, they found it impossible, as well as unbearable, to concede that Kitty had any pulling power.

However often Lysander banked up the fire in the great hall it was definitely getting colder. People’s breath rose in thick white plumes.

‘Cameron will be able to send up smoke signals from the back of the hall,’ said Meredith to his pal Flora. ‘I do hope she gets the script back to your mother’s version.’

But Flora was glaring at a new and splendid fur coat which Hermione had put on over her blue robes, which could only be a Christmas present from Rannaldini.

‘I’m going to report her to Animal Rights,’ she said furiously. She also noticed Rachel had disappeared and Cameron was yelling into a telephone in the summer parlour which was a good thing, as neither of them would have enjoyed Ferdie’s début as he welcomed Mary and Joseph to the Inn, script in one hand, litre of red in the other.

‘Come in, come in,’ he was saying cosily. ‘Of course we take Amex. Just give me the keys to your donkey and I’ll park him. Sign in here.’

The orchestra, all in their overcoats, were in stitches. Kitty nearly fell off her ladder laughing.

‘I’ve got the video of Dirty Dancing,’ murmured Lysander, handing her up another branch of holly.

‘There’s a lot of shepherds in the next room who keep ordering pie on room service,’ Ferdie was now saying. ‘Bang on the wall if they get too noisy.’ Then, handing two room keys to a very disapproving St Joseph, ‘Oh, well, I better go back to watering the wine.’

‘Oh, please, don’t waste precious water,’ interjected Hermione, who was revving up for the birth of her Harrods doll.

Bob, who’d been laughing a lot, told Ferdie in future he’d better stick to the script.

‘And it’s about time for you to sing “Oh, come all ye faithful”,’ he shouted to Flora.

‘No-one’s faithful in Paradise except you and Kitty,’ shouted back Flora. ‘As we’re heavily into realism I better sing, “Come both ye faithful”.’

‘That is quite uncalled for,’ thundered Guy, turning brick red above his blond beard.

Flora strolled towards the stage, hands in her pockets. ‘Oh, come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,’ she sang softly.