Jilly Cooper - Score!

Lucy, who’d spent her life studying faces, thought Tristan’s was marvellous. She longed to paint out the dark shadows, bring forward the deep-set eyes and add a bit of tawny blusher to the sallow cheeks. There was also deceptive strength in the jaw. And when he smiled he had wonderful even white teeth.

She jumped as Meredith, who was now standing on the pew to have a better view, whispered that the Lovells looked as though they were signing a death warrant. ‘Probably will be if Rupert rolls up.’

‘Who’s that beautiful woman in the crimson suit?’ asked Tristan.

‘Taggie Campbell-Black.’ Lucy was appalled to feel a stab of jealousy.

Married to that white-hot fury, thought Tristan in dismay. He hoped Rupert didn’t beat her up.

Hermione had now mounted the pulpit, her gold halo hat glinting in the candlelight, and opened her music and her big brown eyes.

‘Panis Angelicus’ rang out on the arctic air.

Tristan gave a shudder of pleasure.

‘Could you make her look eighteen?’ he muttered to Lucy.

‘She doesn’t look much older, she’s so lovely.’

‘A maestro a day helps you work, rest and play,’ giggled Meredith.

Hermione would have eked out ‘Panis Angelicus’ for ever, if a mobile hadn’t rung again.

‘Hi, Joel. Who won the four thirty at Doncaster?’ demanded Little Cosmo, and Hermione had to scuttle down from the pulpit to cuff him again.

Hermione was followed by Baby, who strolled up to the chancel steps, turned, with his hands in his pockets, and looked straight at Isa and Tabitha, who were waiting to return for the blessing.

‘Where’er you walk,’ sang Baby, and the chapel went still because he had one of those extraordinary voices whose music goes straight to the listener’s heart, and, as he sang, his face lost all its mockery and decadence, leaving only sweetness and beauty. Isa Lovell’s face was totally expressionless, but his eyes were as dark as an open grave at midnight.

God in heaven, thought Tristan, he’s got to replace Fat Franco and play Carlos. Glancing round he found Rannaldini smiling straight across at him, making a thumbs-up sign, as the congregation launched into ‘Jerusalem’.

Isa, his saturnine face lit up, a cigarette concealed in his left hand, was whispering to Tabitha as they came down the aisle.

Oh, please let it be OK, prayed Lucy.

Helen followed, in great embarrassment, on Jake Lovell’s arm. His limp was so bad that their progress was painfully slow.

Eddie tugged Taggie’s sleeve.

‘Wasn’t that the fellow Helen ran off with at the Los Angeles Olympics?’ he demanded loudly. ‘D’yer mean to say the bounder’s done it again?’

After that the Marx Brothers seemed to take over. The guests were firmly shepherded upstairs for champagne cocktails in Helen’s Blue Living Room, and the bride and groom disappeared for their first legal bonk.

Seeing Lucy gazing in wonder at a Sickert of a pretty dancer, Tristan joined her and in no time had learned she was twenty-eight, had worked, like him, on a number of big films and owned a lurcher called James.

‘Nice scent,’ he said, scooping up several asparagus rolls.

‘It’s called Bluebell. It reminds me of home.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘The Lake District.’

‘Ought to be called Daffodils, then. “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” How did you meet Tabitha?’

‘At a Compassion in World Farming rally. We were trying to stop a lorry taking baby calves abroad. When the driver and his mate got out of their lorry because we were blocking the road, Tabitha jumped in, backed up the lorry and drove it away. They arrested her just before the motorway.’

‘What was she going to do with them?’ Tristan noticed Lucy refusing chicken vol-au-vents.

‘Let them loose in her father’s fields. We both spent the night in gaol. It sort of bonds you. We’ve been friends ever since. She’s got absolutely no side,’ she added humbly. ‘And she’s so beautiful. I make up so many faces but hers is easily the best.’

‘You do excellent job today. Look, Lucy.’

When he spoke her name in that husky Gérard Depardieu voice, Lucy was lost.

‘We start filming Don Carlos next April for three month, maybe more,’ he went on. ‘I would like to offer you the make-up job. Would you be free?’

‘Yes, please,’ gasped Lucy. She’d have cancelled anything.

‘Singers are very highly strung,’ sighed Tristan. ‘They can’t pack their voices away in a case like other musicians. But if you can calm Tabitha you would have no problem, I think.’

Having discovered they both shared a pathological loathing of ramblers and deliberately neglected their woods in the hope a rotten tree might fall on one, Eddie had taken an unaccountable shine to Rannaldini.

‘How far d’you go?’ he said, peering out of the window.

‘The whole hog every time,’ giggled Meredith. ‘Oh, do look at the bride.’

Helen had removed her fox-fur hat because it flattened her hair but, to her horror, Tabitha had just returned in jeans and a navy blue polo-neck, which had pulled most of the freesias out of her hair. ‘I was cold, Mummy,’ she protested, feeding vol-au-vents to Sharon the Labrador, who had a pink bow round her neck.

‘Champagne, Mrs Lovell?’ said a lisping, mocking voice.

As Tory Lovell swung round, her sudden desolation that Rannaldini’s evil henchman, Clive, was addressing her new daughter-in-law rather than herself was almost palpable.

‘The make-up artist is most important person on the set,’ Tristan was now telling Lucy, as they admired an olive-green wood by J. S. Cotman. ‘She is first person an actor see in the morning. If she say, “I haven’t been paid for weeks, the director’s a bastard,” it poison atmosphere.’

‘You couldn’t be a bastard,’ blurted out Lucy, then went scarlet as he glanced at her bare wedding-ring finger. ‘It’s hard to be in a long-term relationship if you’re a make-up artist. On location, you tend to slip into affaires . I had a boyfriend at home, but we’ve just broken up,’ she confessed, in her soft Cumbrian accent. ‘He was fed up with me being always away. Said he wanted Marks and Spencer’s dinners and someone who listened in the evenings. Weddings always make you feel a bit bleak.’ She must be drunk already. She could tell this man anything, and he hadn’t volunteered a word about himself.

‘Are you married?’ she asked.

Tristan shook his head.

‘Perhaps that’s why I too make films — you become part of big family and kid yourself you’re not alone.’

‘Who gave you those gorgeous cufflinks?’ Meredith admired Isa’s sapphires. ‘Are they a present from the bride?’

‘No, the best man,’ said Isa.

‘And let the best man win,’ murmured Baby.

Tab, who had been lighting a cigarette, looked round sharply, but as she opened her mouth to retort, Helen tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Can you please rescue poor Tristan? He’s been stuck for ages with your friend Lucy.’

‘No-one gets stuck with Lucy,’ snapped Tab. ‘You chuck him a life-belt if you’re worried.’

‘Dinner is served,’ announced the fearsome Bussage.

Waiters holding candles guided the guests past tapestries and suits of armour down dark, wandering passages to the Great Hall, which looked stupendous. A string quartet was playing in the minstrels’ gallery. The red and gold mural of trumpeters, harpists and fiddlers gleamed in the flickering light of hundreds of candles.

A bottle-green cloth stretched the length of the huge table. Mrs Brimscombe and the maids had risen at dawn to search the woods and intersperse the gold plate and the glittering armada of cut glass with beautiful red and gold fungi and the last coloured leaves of autumn.