Jilly Cooper - Score!

In turn, the orchestra, who worked flat out at every session, thoroughly disapproved of the singers, regarding them as lazy, stupid, hypochondriacal, hysterical and grossly overpaid. They did, however, forgive Baby, because he made them laugh and was monumentally generous. Whenever hampers or crates of wine rolled in from his increasing army of fans, they were handed over to the orchestra. Alpheus, who begrudged giving away anything, was horrified. No wonder Baby had difficulty with tax bills.

Meanwhile, Chloe and Alpheus had worked out their schedule so that whenever neither of them was singing they could slope off to bed.

The ladies of the chorus also thought Alpheus was yummy, and whiled away long, cold hours gazing at him. Predominantly middle-aged, given to baggy jerseys and straining leggings, they were of little interest to Alpheus. One member of the chorus, however, Gloria Prescott, rose like Venus from the permanent waves and was nicknamed ‘Pushy Galore’ because she always pushed her way to the front, nodding, gesticulating, shaking her blonde ringleted head and overacting to catch the director’s or conductor’s eye. She also sucked up to Dame Hermione.

‘Ay am such a fan.’

So Hermione befriended Pushy to infuriate Chloe. Alpheus, Rannaldini, Sexton, Sylvestre and Mikhail had all clocked Pushy. In return, Pushy whispered constantly in all their ears, including Tristan’s, that her greatest role at music college had been Elisabetta and wouldn’t she be younger and prettier in the role than Dame Hermione? One morning she was practising one of Hermione’s arias, and hitting all the high notes perfectly, when Rannaldini’s vulpine smile came round the door.

‘Would you like me to accompany you, my child?’ Then, as he was tinkling away, ‘You see, I am not such an ogre. When I say thees or that ees bad, it is because I have ears to ’ear the wrong things.’

The chorus were not booked for the following day, but Rannaldini confided to Pushy that he would specially like to send a limo for her tomorrow afternoon so she could hear the orchestra recording the overture that he himself had composed, and then perhaps they could have tea at the Ritz. Pushy was in heaven.

But if Rannaldini was histrionic when he conducted Verdi he was ten times more difficult when it came to his own music. Having reduced the orchestra to nervous wrecks in the rehearsal beforehand he started rowing with an increasingly demented Tristan.

‘If you take it that fast,’ yelled Tristan, ‘the hunt will never have time to stream down the valley.’

‘Then they must stream queeker.’

‘Then you will lose magical flowing effect.’

‘I must be faithful to my music.’

‘First time bastard’s been faithful to anything,’ muttered Viking O’Neill, the first horn.

‘I must be faithful to story,’ shouted Tristan.

‘OK, we rehearse two ways: queek then flowing.’

Rannaldini proceeded to take his overture at a breakneck speed, his stick a blur, and then at such a funereal pace that the strings ran out of bow, the woodwind and the brass out of puff, and all got screamed at again.

Tristan nearly killed Rannaldini. So did Serena, when she saw the ringleted, beribboned Pushy Galore at the back of the hall.

‘Rannaldini said no outsiders,’ she stormed.

‘Sir Roberto kaindly sent a limo for me,’ simpered Pushy.

Tristan sat shaking in the control room, his head in his hands.

‘Quiet, please, we now record,’ said Rannaldini imperiously, filling the musicians with such terror they could hardly pick up their instruments. ‘Remember, gentlemen, this is for ever.’

He then took his overture at a totally different, lilting, cantering tempo to which the orchestra had a mad struggle to readjust. At the end there was utter silence. Gazing at their shoes, waiting for the inevitable explosion, his musicians didn’t see the tears in Rannaldini’s eyes.

‘Thank you, gentlemen, that was absolutely beautiful,’ he said quietly. ‘You can have the rest of the afternoon off.’

So he can take me to tea at the Ritz, thought Pushy joyfully.

But ignoring Pushy, abandoning the gaping orchestra, Rannaldini bounded upstairs to the control room where, for once, Serena had lost her cool.

‘You cannot waste an entire session,’ she yelled, as she met him in the doorway. ‘What about the introductions to the other acts?’

But her tirade faltered, as Rannaldini’s hand crept inside her purple jersey.

‘We shall go ’ome to your flat.’

‘But Jessie is there with Nanny Bratislava.’

‘Tell little Jessie she must learn to call me Uncle Roberto.’

The next drama to rock the recording was when Rozzy Pringle finally turned up to sing Tebaldo, Elisabetta’s page. A seventies beauty, the doe-eyed, long-legged Rozzy was so like Celia Johnson that everyone had wanted to have unbrief encounters with her. She was much too old for the part, but at least she’d make Hermione look young, and she had a host of fans.

Granny and Rannaldini, who’d often worked with her, admired her inordinately. Serena and Alpheus had long collected her records. On the other hand, Hermione disliked all other sopranos on principle, and Mikhail, Baby and Chloe, being from a younger generation, scoffed that Rozzy was past it.

Tristan was livid with them. Enchanted at the prospect of working with one of his heroines, he filled Rozzy’s dressing room with spring flowers.

But when Rozzy finally came through the door, on a dank, grey, viciously cold morning, he was appalled. She looked old enough to be Hermione’s grandmother, and was purple with cold to match the darned violet blazer she was wearing over her long, flowered dress. To combat the ageing hippie look, she had curled up her hair but it had dropped in the fog, and fell in lank straight tresses over her jutting collarbones. Everyone greeted her effusively to conceal their shock.

‘Hi, Rozzy, I’m such a fan,’ said Chloe, clanking cheeks. Then, ten seconds later to Baby, ‘She must have lied about her age in Who’s Who . She’ll never see fifty again.’

Having thrust a beautifully wrapped present into Tristan’s hand, ‘a little something because you’re so kind to book me’, Rozzy fled to the loo.

‘Such a drag having Rozzy Pringle here, stinking out the lav again,’ grumbled Hermione, half an hour later, as little Christy Foxe propelled her towards the microphone.

‘You have to move to mike four, next to Baby, in bar forty-five, Dame Hermione,’ he reminded her for the tenth time. Then, consulting his score, he said, smiling at Rozzy as she crept grey and shaking out of her dressing room, ‘You start off standing twelve feet from mike two, then move up close to mike three, Mrs Pringle.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Tristan put his bomber jacket round Rozzy’s trembling shoulders. ‘Tebaldo’s just as petrified as you in this scene. Just make sure those opening “Hey theres” really ring out.’

Rozzy, Baby and Hermione were all in place, their breath rising in white plumes as Rannaldini swept in.

‘Morning, Rozzy, lovely to have you with us. Shall we catch up over a spot of lunch?’ he called out, eliciting scowls from Serena, Pushy and Hermione.

It was too early for the offstage band, waiting in the bar, to have got drunk. Seeing Rannaldini raise his stick on the monitor, Viking O’Neill came in with the mournful, fading sob of the departing hunting horn.

‘“All is silent, night approaches, and the first star glitters on the horizon,”’ sang Baby, who worked the mike like a rock star.

Now they’ll eat their bitchy words, thought Tristan, as Rannaldini nodded, smiling at Rozzy, but despite her anguished face and frenzied mouthings, no ‘Hey theres’ came out.