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  Part of the fun for collectors of what became known as Étienne’s ‘extremely blue period’ was to identify Rannaldini in the paintings as everyone from Apollo to the head of John the Baptist. Rannaldini had also provided beautiful young models to titillate the old goat’s palate and palette.

  The most beautiful had been Tristan’s mother, the sixteen-year-old Delphine. Even Étienne’s staunchest supporters had been horrified when he had made this exquisite child his fourth wife and within a few weeks impregnated her.

  Nemesis moved swiftly. A proud, delighted Étienne was busy sketching his newborn baby, Tristan, when he heard that his fourth and favourite son, Laurent, a young army officer, had been blown up in Chad. Laurent had always been a rebel, and rumours persisted that he had been taken out by his own side. Too crazed with grief even to call for an inquiry, Étienne promptly lost interest in baby Tristan, and hardly seemed to notice when, a few days later, Tristan’s young mother committed suicide. She had been suffering from postnatal depression. It was left to Étienne’s sister, Hortense, a rusty old battleaxe, to organize Tristan’s christening, at which, as one of Delphine’s last wishes, Rannaldini was a godfather.

  Étienne’s indifference persisted. Tristan was the only one of his children he pointedly ignored and never praised. The boy had been brought up with the rest of Étienne’s gilded pack in Paris or at the château in the Tarn, but he was always the wistful calf which grazes away from the herd, longing for yet shying away from love.

  Which was why his godfather was so important to Tristan and why on that wintry November evening in 1977 he could hardly contain his excitement as, in his first dark suit, his gold hair slicked down with water, he peered out at the galloping black clouds and frenziedly thrashing trees of the Bois de Boulogne for a first glimpse of Rannaldini’s Mercedes.

  Although Rannaldini got a Machiavellian kick from singling out Tristan for attention, knowing it irritated the hell out of Étienne, he was genuinely attached to the boy. He had also been a wonderful godfather: writing from all over the world, never forgetting Christmas or a birthday, taking Tristan to concerts whenever he swept through Paris. For his confirmation he had even given him a Guarneri cello, valued at thousands, which Tristan had been practising for days hoping Rannaldini might ask him to play. Tristan had also painted him a watercolour – not too much like Degas – of polo players in the Bois.

  There was Rannaldini’s Mercedes. Tristan hurtled downstairs, beating the housekeeper, slithering on a rose-patterned rug across the floorboards, shyly shaking his godfather by the hand, before submitting to a warm, scented embrace.

  As usual, Rannaldini was in a hurry. As a tenth-birthday present, he was taking Tristan to Verdi’s greatest opera, Don Carlos. The curtain would rise in an hour so they were cutting it fine, but first he wanted to hear Tristan play and whisked him into the library.

  Here Rannaldini paused only to admire himself on the cover of Paris-Match, and clock any new artists on the dark red walls. Over the centuries, the Montignys had increased their fortune buying paintings ahead of fashion. Rannaldini had considerably bolstered his coffers by using Étienne’s eye to build up his own collection.

  Opening the piano score of Don Carlos, at the great cello solo at the beginning of Act IV, he placed it on Tristan’s music stand.

  ‘Try this.’

  Even though Tristan was sight-reading, he played with total concentration and the sad sound blossomed as his long fingers vibrated on the strings.

  ‘Excellent,’ cried Rannaldini in delight. ‘You work very hard. And this is excellent too,’ he added, putting Tristan’s watercolour inside the piano score. ‘I will hang it in my study. We must go.’

  ‘I hope you will not be bored,’ said Rannaldini, manoeuvring the Mercedes through the pre-theatre and dinner traffic at a speed that astounded even the Parisians. ‘It is long opera but very interesting. I will briefly explain story.

  ‘France and Spain are ending long, bloody war. To unite the two countries, Elisabetta, the French king’s beautiful daughter, is to marry Carlos, the son of King Philip II of Spain. Understand?’

  Tristan nodded. He loved the way Rannaldini never talked down to him.

  ‘Young Carlos reach France in disguise, wanting to see if he has been lumbered with ugly cow, but when he see Princess Elisabetta out hunting in the woods,’ Rannaldini gesticulated at the Bois de Boulogne, ‘he find her utterly beautiful, with dark hair to her waist. When he reveal he is Carlos, her future husband, she fall in love too. They will live ’appy ever after.’ Jumping a red light, Rannaldini made a V-sign at an outraged crone in a Volvo.

  ‘Then awful thing ’appen. Carlos’s father, Philip II, decide he want Elisabetta for himself and marries her instead. This is very selfish because King already has beautiful girlfriend called Eboli.

  ‘Poor Carlos, however, cannot stop loving Elisabetta even though she is now Queen of Spain, married to his father, and she still love him. But everywhere in Spanish court they are spied on. I won’t spoil the ending.’

  They were approaching the opera house.

  ‘Rannaldini, Rannaldini,’ shouted admirers, surging forward.

  A group protesting against nuclear tests was also lurking. One, a handsome but ferocious blonde, banged on the Mercedes window, which Rannaldini lowered a fraction.

  ‘How would you like your testicles shrivelled by radiation?’ she yelled.

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ murmured Rannaldini, closing the window as her furious face disappeared in a tidal wave of fans.

  ‘I’m getting a bodyguard,’ he complained, as a couple of doormen finally dragged him and Tristan through the stage door.

  Tristan was unfazed, particularly when Rannaldini, while donning the splendour of white tie and tails, offered him a birthday glass of Krug. All down the passage, singers could be heard warming up.

  A white gardenia in a glass box for Rannaldini to slot into his buttonhole was delivered to the Maestro’s dressing room. Most of the flowers arriving were for Cecilia Rannaldini, his second wife, who was singing Eboli, and who now could be heard screaming, ‘When will people learn I only like red roses,’ as she hurled everything else on to the floor.

  Chic and svelte for a diva, Cecilia had done much to advance Rannaldini’s career, not least by changing her famous name to his. Having barged into the conductor’s room and smothered Tristan in kisses, she started rowing with Rannaldini in Italian.

  Carlos was being sung by a plump, good-looking Italian, Franco Palmieri. Rannaldini’s latest discovery, an unknown South African called Hermione, was making her début as Elisabetta.

  The packed audience was too old to interest Tristan but, with his chin resting on the front of the red velvet box, he gazed down in wonder at the glittering instruments in the pit. Opposite him were the cellos and behind them towered the double basses, red-gold as beeches in autumn. But once the action started on stage, and hunting horns heralded Hermione as Elisabetta riding in on a real grey horse, Tristan hardly noticed the orchestra. Hermione’s thick brown hair did indeed curl to her waist and he couldn’t take his eyes off her cleavage, which seemed to part like curtains whenever she hit a high note – and how gloriously she sang!

  Rannaldini’s black hair was drenched with sweat, as his dark eyes sent laser beams to singer or musician so they responded almost without realizing it. Now he was smiling at Hermione, magicking increasingly beautiful sounds with a twitch of his baton.

  Cecilia Rannaldini had a pure, clean voice. But, not realizing that shouting and crying all night can harm the vocal cords, Tristan thought she sounded very rough. She was, however, a great actress and, as she glared at Hermione, put him in mind of the wicked queen in Snow White. King Philip, on the other hand, was so stern and cold with his son Carlos, he reminded Tristan of his own father, Étienne.

  Alone in the big box, he was also terrified by the Grand Inquisitor, blind, hooded, bent over his sticks like a black widow spider, and when the flames began to flicker roun
d the poor bare feet of the heretics, Tristan leapt to his own feet screaming, ‘No, no they mustn’t burn,’ which was luckily drowned, by orchestra, church bells and chorus loudly praising God and the Inquisition.

  Every role in Don Carlos is demanding, but it was the young Hermione who drew the most rapturous applause. Tristan clapped his hands until they were as pink as the carnations that cascaded down on her.

  After more champagne and hugging, as people poured backstage to congratulate them, Rannaldini, Cecilia, Fat Franco, who’d sung Carlos, and Hermione swept Tristan off to the Ritz, where he still couldn’t speak for excitement. Everyone was sweet to him because Rannaldini made sure they knew both of his birthday and of his famous father.

  The management presented him with a frothy fruit cocktail filled with coloured straws. Rannaldini, who never minded what the boy ate, allowed him to have lobster Thermidor with sizzling cheese topping, followed by blackcurrant sorbet.

  Hermione, who’d changed into low-cut dark blue lace, presented him with one of her pink carnations. Then a birthday cake arrived with ten candles and he opened Rannaldini’s presents: a red leatherbound copy of Schiller’s play Don Carlos on which Verdi had based his opera, and a video camera. Tristan couldn’t stop saying thank you.

  ‘He already play cello very well,’ boasted Rannaldini.

  ‘Are you going to be a musician?’ asked Hermione.

  ‘No.’ Tristan blushed and stroked the camera. ‘I’m going to make films.’

  He was too happy to absorb the tensions around him. Singers are often so fired up after a performance, they want sex instantly. Franco’s machismo was clearly dented because Hermione made it plain she was interested only in Rannaldini, which didn’t improve Cecilia’s temper either. She and Franco muttered that Hermione had deliberately hung on to notes to make them run out of breath. Nor would she have got such applause in the middle of Act V if Rannaldini hadn’t made an artificial pause. Fortunately Hermione didn’t understand Italian.

  She was like one of his sister’s old-fashioned dolls, Tristan decided, who opened their big eyes and said, ‘Mama,’ although in Hermione’s case it seemed to be, ‘Me, me.’

  ‘Was it really twenty call-backs?’ she was now asking Rannaldini. ‘Pinch me, so I know I’m awake.’

  She screamed as Rannaldini pinched her hard enough to leave white marks on her arm. Then he dropped his sleek dark head and kissed them better. Cecilia stormed out, pretending that their daughter Natasha had flu.

  ‘My wife is more neurotic than the horse in Act One,’ grumbled Rannaldini. ‘You should be specially interested in Don Carlos,’ he added to Tristan, ‘because one of your Montigny ancestors visited Spanish court during Philip II’s reign. And the Inquisition kill him, thinking he is spy. I wish I had smart relations like that,’ he went on fretfully.

  ‘I cannot imagine you not being smart, Signor Rannaldini,’ said a soft, dreamy voice, and they were engulfed in the sweetest scent, as though a bank of violets had bloomed behind them.

  It was the only time Tristan had ever seen his godfather blush. Pausing at the table, in floating chiffon as violet as her eyes, a gently mocking smile playing over her full pink lips, was the most beautiful woman in France: Claudine Lauzerte, the actress wife of the opposition Minister for Cultural Affairs.

  ‘Madame Lauzerte!’

  Jumping to his feet, Rannaldini kissed her hand. Then, clicking his fingers at the wine waiter, he beseeched her to join them.

  ‘I am leaving. I hear your Don Carlos is wonderful, with a sensational new star.’

  Bowing and scraping like a brothel-keeper at the arrival of a royal stag party, Rannaldini introduced Hermione.

  ‘And this is Franco Palmieri who play Carlos.’

  Leaping up, Franco sent several glasses and a vase of flowers flying.

  Claudine Lauzerte had such impact that for the first five minutes people talked gibberish in her presence, so she turned to Tristan.

  ‘This is my godson, Tristan de Montigny, Étienne’s boy,’ explained Rannaldini proudly.

  ‘Ah.’ The violet eyes widened in amusement. ‘Your father often ask me to sit for him, but we are both always so busy.’ She glanced at the video camera. ‘You are obviously destined to become a director. With those looks, every leading lady will do exactly what you tell her.’

  Noting Tristan’s pallor, his deep-set eyes mere hollows, she chided Rannaldini. ‘This poor child’s exhausted! Take him home.’

  ‘I will send you tickets,’ Rannaldini called after her.

  ‘I cannot believe I’ve met Claudine Lauzerte,’ babbled Hermione. ‘She must have had several facelifts to look so lovely.’

  On the drive home, having jettisoned a furious Franco, Rannaldini pointed to a round white moon, retreating behind a lacing of dark clouds.

  ‘She is upstaged by your beauty,’ he told Hermione.

  From the back seat, Tristan noticed Hermione continually holding her throat as if it were some precious jewel. Tomorrow he would take his new metal-detector, a present from Aunt Hortense, into the Bois and find her – and perhaps Claudine Lauzerte as well – a diamond ring.

  Hermione was now complaining about lecherous conductors.

  ‘I was doing Rinaldo last week and Sir Rodney Macintosh, who must be over sixty, asked me to his room for a nightcap and greeted me wearing nothing but a pair of socks.’

  Rannaldini wasn’t remotely shocked.

  ‘Eef you knee conductor in groin, he won’t give you more work. You must invent fiancé, preferably black belt at judo.’

  Even such a fascinating subject couldn’t stop Tristan dropping off. Later he never knew if he’d dreamt it, or whether Rannaldini’s hand really had vanished into Hermione’s dark lace dress, and a moonlike breast emerged.

  He did wake screaming, however, as Rannaldini pulled up outside the house and Étienne, still in his painter’s smock, loomed huger and blacker than the Grand Inquisitor in the doorway. Although his father cheered up when he saw Hermione, he curtly dispatched Tristan to bed.

  ‘And no ducking out of school tomorrow.’

  ‘Good night, little one,’ called Rannaldini, then, to irritate Étienne, ‘I’ll be up in a few minutes.’

  In fact it was an hour, and Tristan again woke screaming from lobster-induced nightmare as another broad-shouldered black figure loomed over him.

  ‘It all ’appen four hundred years ago,’ said Rannaldini as he tucked the boy in. ‘You mustn’t ’ave bad dreams.’

  Looking round the bleak attic room, seeing the video camera, the red leatherbound copy of Schiller’s Don Carlos and Hermione’s carnation in a tooth-mug on the bedside table, he picked up the silver frame, containing the only photograph of Tristan’s mother, Delphine, in the house.

  ‘So beautiful, a little like Madame Lauzerte, don’t you think?’

  ‘Will she sit for Papa?’ asked Tristan hopefully.

  ‘I doubt it. She is very pure lady – her nickname is Madame Vierge.’

  ‘Did they really burn people alive in those days?’

  ‘They do today with electric chairs and bombs. That’s how your brother, Laurent, died,’ said Rannaldini.

  But the terror in Tristan’s eyes was in case his father walked in and heard the forbidden name. Such had been Étienne’s heartbreak, no allusion to Laurent was allowed in the house.

  ‘Why didn’t King Philip like Carlos?’ Tristan asked wistfully.

  ‘Fathers and sons.’ Rannaldini brushed back the boy’s hair. ‘Philip was jealous, Carlos had whole life ahead of him – to pull the girls.’

  ‘Can I work for you when I grow up?’ murmured Tristan.

  ‘One day we will make great film of Don Carlos together,’ promised Rannaldini.

  Eighteen spectacularly successful years later, on a wet, windy, late-October morning, Sir Roberto Rannaldini gazed down on the valley of Paradise, often described as the jewel of the Cotswolds.

  Rannaldini owned many splendid houses, but the brooding,
secretive Paradise Abbey, which he had somewhat hubristically renamed Valhalla after the home of the gods in Teutonic mythology, was the one he loved most.

  From his study on the first floor he could admire, albeit through mist and rain, his tennis courts, swimming-pool, hangar for jet and helicopter, lovingly-tended gardens and racehorses, grazing in fields sweeping down to his lake and the river Fleet, which ran along the bottom of the valley.

  To his left, coiled up like a sleeping snake, was the famous Valhalla Maze. To the right, deep in the woods, lurked the watchtower, where he edited, composed and seduced. Beyond, disappearing into the mist, was the ravishing mill house, belonging to Hermione Harefield, his mistress for the last eighteen years.

  But even as Rannaldini gloated over his valley, the dying fires of autumn seemed to symbolize his own decline. For the first time ever, his massive royalty cheque was down. Last Sunday, when he was conducting at the Appleton piano competition, his favoured candidate and latest conquest, the ravishing Natalia Philipovna, had been beaten into second place, despite intense lobbying, by Rannaldini’s detested stepson, Marcus Campbell-Black.

  The same evening, Rannaldini learnt he had failed in his bid to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, who had accompanied the finalists. As an ultimate humiliation at the party afterwards, the first horn had hit Rannaldini across the room – his fall had been broken only by the pudding trolley and the flaccid curves of a grisly crone from the Arts Council. The newspapers had had a field day. Rannaldini shuddered.

  Like Philip II of Spain, who had exhausted himself and his nation’s coffers trying to hold his Habsburg Empire together, Rannaldini was also learning by bitter experience that his vast kingdom could be maintained only by the crippling expense of waging war on all fronts. He was currently engaged in law-suits with orchestras, unions, sacked musicians, mistresses and ex-wives.