Jilly Cooper - Score!

Bats flitted across a rising yellow moon, as he floated back to Valhalla trying to keep the silly grin off his face. Overhead, proud and defiant, strode the constellation of Hercules. As Tabitha loved him, he could dispatch thirteen hundred labours. Suddenly he was singing, ‘I am Carlos, and I love you, yes, I love you,’ at the top of his voice. He was so happy he walked straight under a ladder.

On his bed lay a fax of his interview with The Times . He had been very taken by and had got mildly tight over lunch with Valerie Grove, who’d written it. She had described him as the complete Prince Charmant, with naturally aristocratic good manners and a haircut that could only have come from Paris.

Tristan smiled. He must show Lucy that bit.

The piece mentioned his ‘close friendship’ with Claudine Lauzerte, and said that the word on the street about The Lily in the Valley was that it would be both smash hit and artistic triumph.

‘Is This the Greatest Montigny of Them All?’ said the headline. Below was a big picture of himself. Flanking it were smaller pictures of Étienne, and Tristan’s older brothers, including an incredibly rare snapshot of Laurent, who had looked so like Che Guevara.

‘One reason I make Don Carlos ’, Tristan was quoted as saying, ‘was my brother Laurent die twenty-eight years ago, blown up in Chad fighting injustice, like Posa. His death broke my father’s heart. I wanted to give him my own memorial.’

Étienne would have gone ballistic at the mention of Laurent. Tristan hoped the crescendo-ing of thunder wasn’t his father smashing furniture in heaven.

But it seemed a lovely piece. Perhaps he was being too harsh on the press in Don Carlos . They weren’t all bad apples like Beattie Johnson. But his head was too full of Tabitha.

He wished his mother, who had been only two years younger than Tab when she died, was alive to celebrate with him. Idly he switched on his machine.

‘Dearest boy.’ It was Rannaldini at his most silken. ‘However late you get in, pop down to my watch-tower. We must talk.’

Bloody hell, thought Tristan, as he pulled on a pair of jeans. He hoped Rannaldini wasn’t going to be insanely jealous.

The moon, pale and sinister as Rannaldini, kept vanishing behind fluffy sable cloud. A witch’s trail soared straight through Hercules. A chill breeze ruffled the leaves as Tristan walked through Hangman’s Wood. The stench of decaying wild garlic was stronger than ever.

Rannaldini, waiting in the watch-tower doorway, was wearing a black crew-necked sweater that gave him a vaguely ecclesiastical air.

‘How’s Tab?’ he asked, as he led the way to the glowing red sitting room on the first floor.

‘Very shaken.’

As Tristan collapsed on a pale-grey sofa, his tummy rumbled. The last thing he’d eaten had been one of Rozzy’s croissants at breakfast, and he didn’t remember finishing it. The vast Armagnac Rannaldini handed him would go straight to his head. ‘She’s OK,’ he went on, ‘but we must tell the police. It can’t have been an accident, and about Flora’s fox being cut up. Tab was so brave,’ then, unable to help himself, ‘and so adorable.’

Rannaldini had gone very quiet, frowning as he paced up and down, trampling on the red roses that patterned the faded Aubusson carpet.

‘I have been sad recently that you and I have so often come to blows,’ he said gently, ‘but we only fight because we so passionately want Carlos to work.’

‘Of course.’

‘But I never stop loving you, Tristan. You are still my little godson.’

Rannaldini’s voice was so hypnotic. Perhaps he should do those introductions after all, thought Tristan.

‘And I love you,’ he stammered. He felt very happy that everything was falling so wonderfully into place. But Rannaldini went on pacing.

‘There is…’ he began. ‘No, I cannot.’

‘Go on,’ urged Tristan.

‘There is secret I prayed I would never have to tell you, but as very close friend of your father…’ He paused.

Tristan went cold.

‘Have you never wondered why Étienne neglected you and never loved you?’

Tristan winced.

‘All the time,’ he said wearily. ‘Laurent died, I suppose. I lived. Laurent was my father’s favourite son, then Maman committed suicide. Maybe it deranged him. On his deathbed, he was rambling on that my father was my grandfather. I didn’t know what he was talking about.’ He shuddered, remembering Étienne in the huge bed, with the determinedly cheerful nurse siphoning off the fountains of blood.

The moon, like a Beardsley rakehell, was leering in through a high window covered in a black lacing of clematis, whose quivering shadows in turn cast an illusion of mobility on Rannaldini’s cold, impassive face.

‘Your mother was most stunning woman I ever meet. Turn round. I don’t think you ever see painting your father did.’

Tristan leapt to his feet. Behind him on the scarlet wall was a small oil of a young girl, her naked body as white as Tab’s but far more softly curved and passive. She leant against a dark green sofa. The young Rannaldini, black-haired, black eyes glittering with lust and power, was stripped to the waist in tight breeches and boots. He had a hunting whip in his hand, and had coiled the long lash round the girl’s neck. There was an expression of terror and wild excitement on her face.

‘Maman,’ stammered Tristan, finding himself blushing in horror and sick, shaming excitement at what was clearly one of his father’s masterpieces.

‘It is called The Snake Charmer ,’ purred Rannaldini. ‘The texture of her body is quite extraordinary. I shall miss her dreadfully.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘The Tate and the Louvre are planning a huge Montigny retrospective. Your beautiful mother will tour the world and take her place in the pantheon of women who inspired great artists.’

‘ Non! ’ cried Tristan, in outrage. ‘For God’s sake, Rannaldini.’

He wanted to throw his shirt round Delphine’s naked body. Dragging his eyes away, he collapsed, trembling, on the sofa, fumbling for a cigarette.

‘She certainly inspired your father,’ began Rannaldinisoftly. ‘What Étienne did not know was that her father, Maxim, your grandfather, was a thug, brutish, utterly unstable, his sole passion his daughter. He was obsessed with her. Delphine only went out with me,’ idly, Rannaldini flicked a speck of dust from a bronze of Wagner, ‘to escape him. For the same reason, she marry your father. Maxim, her father, was so crazed with jealousy he wait till she and Étienne return from honeymoon — which had not been a success, the marriage hardly consummated. Étienne fly to Australia for two months to fulfil commission.’

Rannaldini paused, his face full of compassion.

‘My conscience torture me. Should I tell you this?’

‘Go on, for fuck’s sake.’

‘A week later, Maxim roll up at empty house and rape her.’

Breath swamped Tristan’s chest, his heart had no room to beat.

‘By horrible luck, she became pregnant.’ Rannaldini admired his expression of genuine concern in a big gilt mirror. ‘But she was too terrified to tell Étienne so she passed the baby off as his.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ croaked Tristan, his legs shaking with a violent life of their own. ‘Why didn’t she have an abortion?’

‘She was so young, a strict Catholic, and terrified of it coming out that her father was clinically insane, that people might commit her because she was insane too, that Étienne might kick her out, back to Maxim.’

‘You could have helped her,’ spat Tristan.

‘My poor boy, I was in Berlin. I knew nothing. After you were born, Delphine sink into depression and reject you. Your father was too devastated by Laurent’s death to give her any support. Then he do sums. You are large, healthy boy, not premature. He furiously cross-question your mother. She collapse from guilt and weakness and tell him everything, then take her own life. That was the dreadful irony.’ Rannaldini’s eyes were velvety dark as pansies with sympathy. ‘That Laurent, the flower of the Montignys, was dead… and you…’