Jilly Cooper - Score!

As a horrible result, Rannaldini had spitefully filled the relationless row behind her with Valhalla staff: Sally and Betty, the pretty maids, who’d gone to London to look after Serena Westwood’s Jessie, Mr Brimscombe, the gardener, who was hopping mad because Helen had stripped his conservatories of flowers, Mrs Brimscombe, the housekeeper, who’d been allowed out of the kitchens for half an hour, and to top it the fearful Bussage in a trilby and a severe grey dress. No doubt they’d be joined soon by Clive, Rannaldini’s henchman, and Tabloid the Rottweiler.

Having ignored Helen, the bridegroom across the aisle was reading the Racing Post and murmuring to Baby, whom he’d somehow seconded into being his best man.

As there was a limited time one could admire the white fountains of jasmine and freesias and the Murillo Madonna, which Rannaldini had insisted on hanging on the wall to the right of the altar, Helen walked down the aisle to disabuse Lady Chisledon, a local worthy, of any idea that Bussage might be a relation.

Bloody hell! Helen prided herself on not swearing, even in private, but Taggie Campbell-Black had just tiptoed in looking wildly embarrassed but undeniably gorgeous in a crimson suit with a black velvet collar and a little crimson pillbox on her dark cloudy hair. Rannaldini, who was hovering in the doorway, was all over, or under her, because Taggie was so tall, like a bull terrier courting a wolfhound.

Even worse, Taggie had brought Helen’s dreadful ex-father-in-law, Eddie Campbell-Black, who was getting drunker by the minute with the aid of a hip flask and wearing Rupert’s far too large morning coat, with a badge pinned to the lapel, saying, ‘Old men make better lovers.’

‘Ouch!’ squawked Helen, as Eddie pinched her bottom.

The Lovells looked as though they’d come to a funeral, the men in dark suits, the women with too much hair sticking out under the front of their hats, except for Tory, who looked, maddeningly, much prettier in a royal blue suit than Helen remembered, and who never let go of Jake’s hand.

And now, late as ever, Hermione swept in, having abandoned her usual Chanel suits in favour of a white angel’s midi-dress and a gold halo hat. Psyching herself into the saintly role of Elisabetta, thought Tristan sourly. It would hold more credence if she made the odd rehearsal.

In one hand, Hermione was clutching the music of ‘Panis Angelicus’, in the other, her fiendish son, Little Cosmo, who proceeded to kick the pews, crunch crisps and stick out a green tongue at the rest of the congregation.

‘That’s Rannaldini’s illegit,’ whispered Meredith Whalen, who’d taken one overexcited look at Tristan and swept him and Lucy Latimer into a back pew. ‘Can’t you tell from the nasty rolling black eyes? And he’s twice as evil as Rannaldini.’

Meredith, who was known as the Ideal Homo because he was so much in demand as a spare man at Paradise dinner parties, was a hugely successful interior designer, whom Rannaldini had booked to do the sets for Don Carlos . Meredith looked so innocent and sweet all his gay friends wanted to put him in short pants and smack him.

‘And did you ever see anyone so tense as Jake and Tory Lovell?’ he was now whispering to Tristan. ‘Like blasted oaks. I suppose it’s sad when one’s little acorn goes astray. And look at Bussage! She’s a worse control freak than Rannaldini and she’s wearing her control frock. We could film Philip’s coronation in here, you know. Don’t you just love that Murillo? Must be worth five million. That’s why Rannaldini spends so much time in chapel gloating over it.’

Eddie Campbell-Black, who’d been ogling Lady Chisledon, suddenly spied Hermione, one of his former amours.

‘Hello, Henrietta,’ he bellowed.

Tabitha, who was even drunker than Eddie, swayed on Rannaldini’s arm in the chapel doorway.

‘You look sensational,’ he murmured.

She was wearing two triangles of white silk, high at the neck and falling nine inches above her knees. She held a small bunch of freesias, to match the flowers in her hair.

‘My dress is new, my knickers are borrowed from Mummy,’ she informed Rannaldini. ‘My toenails are painted blue, and you’re the something old.’ For a second she frowned at him. ‘I ought to be at Penscombe, with Daddy giving me away.’

‘The last thing I’m ever going to do is give you away,’ purred Rannaldini, his right knuckles gently kneading her left breast.

Then he winced at the first strains of ‘Here Comes the Bride’.

‘Who chose this junk?’

‘I did,’ said Tab, then, glancing round the chapel she gave a sob. ‘Oh, thank God, Taggie and Granddaddy are here.’

Striding up the aisle like a young Amazon, she paused to squeeze her stepmother’s hand.

‘What a vulgar dress,’ said Hermione, in a very audible whisper.

‘When’s her baby due?’ asked Little Cosmo loudly.

Lucy, who’d hardly had a second to change into a dark brown suit and black bowler, or to apply any of her make-up skills on herself, prayed that Tabitha wouldn’t be sick.

‘That’s Percy the Parson,’ hissed Meredith, as a red-faced cleric with straggly grey hair moved forward to welcome the bride. ‘He’s got such a plain wife, they’re known as One Man and His Dog.’

Lucy fought the giggles.

‘And the bridegroom is to die for,’ sighed Meredith, as Isa moved beside Tabitha. ‘Such a moody, vindictive little shit, pure Heathcliff, in fact, but bags I be Catherine Earnshaw.’

‘Should have had a haircut. Fellow’s hair’s longer than Tabitha’s,’ said Eddie loudly.

There was an awkward moment when Percy the Parson asked if anyone knew of any impediment or just cause why the couple shouldn’t be joined in matrimony and Little Cosmo called out, ‘I do,’ with a maniacal cackle and had his ears boxed by his mother.

‘To have and to hold from this day forward,’ intoned Isa.

‘Chap sounds like something out of Brookside ,’ muttered a disapproving Eddie, taking a swig from his hip flask.

‘I, Tabitha Maud Lavinia, take thee, Isaac Jake,’ said Tab in the flat, clipped drawl that reminded almost everyone present of Rupert.

‘Love, cherish and obey,’ she went on, looking mockingly at Isa from under her mascaraed lashes.

‘Oh dear.’ Taggie blew her nose on a piece of loo paper. She certainly hadn’t obeyed Rupert today.

‘With my body I thee worship…’ As she lurched over to kiss Isa on the jawbone, Tab nearly fell over. ‘And with all my rather depleted worldly goods, I thee endow, although I am going to keep The Engineer,’ she added, as an afterthought.

‘ Tabitha! ’ hissed an appalled Helen. What would the Lovells think?

Fortunately everyone was distracted by the ringing of Little Cosmo’s mobile. Tab got the giggles.

Even more fortunately, Percy dispensed with a sermon. He’d been kept waiting quite long enough, and when he’d asked Helen and Rannaldini for touching memories of the bride, Helen couldn’t think of any and Rannaldini’s had been quite unrepeatable.

As everyone knelt to pray it could be seen that the bridegroom was wearing sapphire cufflinks as big and blue as his wife’s eyes.

Followed by a smirking Rannaldini, a tight-lipped Helen, an ashen Jake and Tory, Tab and Isa went off to sign the register.

Tristan turned to Lucy. ‘That is best make-up repair job I ever see. You wouldn’t know she’d shedded a tear.’ No Frenchwoman would be seen dead in that black bowler, decided Tristan, but Lucy had a nice face, not pretty, but kind and generous. With her dark curls, freckles, bright eyes and athletic body, she reminded him of a heroine in one of those Mallory Towers books his girl cousins were always devouring in the holidays.