Score! (10 page)

But it was the last gentle thing he did. Sharon must have thought one of the blacksmith’s oaks had landed on her as they collapsed onto the bed. Ripping off Tab’s striped pyjamas, scattering the buttons of his shirt, jamming the zip of his jeans, leaving on just his gypsy earrings to ward off evil, Isa appreciated her true beauty only when he held her naked and quivering in his arms. Kissing, often biting his way downwards, he found a little seahorse tattooed just below her left breast.

‘You’re in for a bumpy ride, fellow,’ he whispered mockingly, as his exploring fingers crept between Tab’s legs.

‘Oh, bliss, you mustn’t, oh, please go on,’ gasped Tab, then, worried that he might be bored by such a wonderful but extended foreplay, ‘Oh, please come inside me.’

As Isa brought her to extremes of pleasure with the same pelvic thrusts that drove winners past the post, she knew exactly why he had been nicknamed the Black Cobra. It was as though constant lightning were being unleashed from his body, and she never seemed to dry up, as if a Cotswold spring was constantly bubbling between her legs. As their breathing grew quicker and the four-poster creaked like an old tree in a high wind, she thought she had never known lovemaking like it.

As he watched them through the two-way mirror, which kept misting up, Rannaldini realized he had never seen anything like it either. Silvered by moonlight, they were so transported by their passion, it was as though Canova’s Cupid and Psyche had sprung to white-hot life: constantly changing positions, they coupled with snakelike frenzy.

Now Isa was kissing one of Tab’s small, amazingly high breasts, biting the nipple until she cried out. Now he was lying sideways his dark head and stabbing tongue buried in her blonde pubic hair as simultaneously her lips and tongue teased and caressed his cock, which Rannaldini was furious to confess looked bigger than his own. At least the little blighter couldn’t hold out much longer.

But, exulting in his control, Isa drew himself out as proudly as Excalibur. Then swivelling round, he plunged inside her once more, his pale murderer’s face triumphant, his hips a juddering blur. Only when Tab arched, went rigid then cried out, did he finally let himself come, kissing in ecstasy her long white throat, her damp forehead, her loving mouth, as for a fleeting moment his defences were down.

Frantically wiping a peephole in the steamed-up mirror, Rannaldini thought he would explode — and did. He must install a video camera so he could gloat for hours over the playback. Reluctantly he had to admit that Isa was as good at riding women as he was horses.

‘I love you,’ mumbled Tabitha, when Isa finally removed his mouth from hers.

‘Thank God you’ve washed off that bloody awful perfume.’

‘It’s Mummy’s. Jolie Madame. She never wore anything else until this summer when she switched to Organza so I thought I’d help her use up the old stuff.’

In horror Isa realized he must have smelt the same scent on his father, when Jake had come upstairs to tuck him in after stolen meetings with Helen.

‘Never wear it again,’ he snapped, and rolled off her on to his back.

‘Buy me something else, then. God, you’re a revelation, I’ve always been
soixante
-nervous before, but with you it was unbelievable.’

Isa couldn’t believe it had happened. How could he have betrayed his parents like that?

‘I’d better go,’ he said.

Hearing the rusty creak of drawbridges being pulled up, fighting desolation, Tab scooped a drowsy Sharon into the warm place left by his body. Then she caught sight of the bedside clock. ‘It’s October the thirty-first now,’ she said insolently. ‘Happy birthday, Daddy. Sleeping with the enemy is the worst present I could give him.’

Isa glowered down at her, his arms trapping her like the debtor’s chair. ‘Is that why you went to bed with me?’ he hissed.

‘Not entirely,’ said Tab.

For the next week, they devoured each other, making love in the hayloft, on the wet autumn leaves, knowing they were playing with fire but unable to stop themselves. Aware of the difference in their backgrounds and temperaments, Isa was the more detached of the two. But within three weeks Tab was pregnant.

Isa, who had a strong sense of dynasty and a smouldering eye for the main chance, hoped that Rannaldini would settle money on her as hinted, and insisted they got married. There was no way a possible Lovell heir was going to be terminated. Anyway he couldn’t get enough of Tab.

But he was worried sick about Martie, his Australian girlfriend, to whom, in explanation of his absence, he had considerably exaggerated Jake’s illness. In junking her and consorting with the devil-led Campbell-Blacks, had he lost all his principles?

Terrified of trapping him, Tab would willingly have had an abortion.

‘I’ve never looked after a man,’ she gibbered. ‘I’ll probably give you hay for dinner.’ But she loved him so passionately, she was only too happy to get married.

Events were much bowled along by Rannaldini, who not only agreed to pay for the wedding, which — because of his overflowing diary — could take place only on a late afternoon in the middle of December, but also offered them his latest purchase, Magpie Cottage, just across the valley, rent-free.

Helen had mixed feelings. Tab could have done infinitely better and it would mean the press raking up her
affaire
with Isa’s father, Jake, but she’d enjoy showing everyone at the wedding how much better she looked than Tory, the wife Jake had gone back to. She must book in for a few days at Champney’s.

Finally there was undeniable pleasure in how much the whole thing would enrage Rupert, and at least it meant that Tab, who had draped a banana skin on Psyche’s head only that morning, would move out. And Rannaldini wouldn’t run after her any more if she married Isa, who looked capable of knifing any competition — or so Helen thought.

Meanwhile, rehearsals for
Don Carlos
were supposed to have started in a defunct WI hall in North London. Tristan, however, grew increasingly frustrated when all his stars, headed by Fat Franco who was singing Otello at La Scala, failed to turn up. This meant that poor Mikhail, whose hotel bill was being picked up by Liberty Productions, had no-one to rehearse with except his voice coach, who found it a great strain having to squawk Hermione’s and Chloe’s parts, let alone growling like an old bear pretending to be Alpheus. The reason for this mass absenteeism was that top singers hate rehearsing because they don’t get paid for it. ‘Why should we roll up because Mikhail Pezcherov hasn’t sung the part in English before?’ they chorused. ‘We’re only going to be reading our parts at the recording anyway, and could be whizzing round the world avoiding tax and making fortunes elsewhere.’

‘Franco and I never met when we did
Tristan and Isolde
,’ protested Hermione, on a very crackly call from a Florida beach. ‘I just put on cans and recorded the entire opera from the orchestral track.’

‘That’s why it was so lifeless and boring,’ yelled a furious Tristan, but Hermione had hung up.

Tristan also spent a lot of time on the telephone shouting at Rannaldini.

‘How the fuck can I direct individual rehearsals when there aren’t any individuals to direct?’

‘I am shocked at them all,’ lied Rannaldini, and to placate Tristan, he invited him down to Valhalla the following Saturday. ‘Then we iron out every problem. I also invite that Australian tenor, Baby Spinosissimo,’ Rannaldini added airily. ‘He’s coming down to see his jockey, Isa Lovell, who by an extraordinary coincidence happens to be my jockey. Why don’t you drive down together?’

Rannaldini rubbed his hands in glee. What frisson it would add if Tristan, and particularly Baby, were present at the wedding! Thank goodness, Clive, his bodyguard, had discovered that on the big day Rupert would be out of the country with his son Xavier.

Poor Xav had not only had to endure Cosmo’s horrible bullying. Rupert had also found his little son sobbing his heart out because he’d been scrubbing his face for hours trying to get it as white as Rupert’s. Rupert had struggled not to weep too. Instead he decided to give Xavier some sense of identity by taking him back to Colombia. Here, Xav could meet the nuns in the Bogotá convent in which he’d spent his first two years, and see something of the ravishing surrounding countryside. Taggie, Rupert’s wife, and Bianca, Xav’s younger sister, would have gone as well if Bianca hadn’t caught measles.

At midnight on the eve of the wedding, therefore, an unsuspecting Taggie was at Penscombe, filling up the deep freeze for Christmas. Bianca, whose temperature was down, was fast asleep upstairs. The six dogs, except for Gertrude the mongrel who always kept an eye open for scraps, slept in their baskets. Two huge moussakas for the staff party were complete, except for the cheese topping which was bubbling on the Aga.

Having laid the big scrubbed table for the grooms’ and jockeys’ breakfast tomorrow, Taggie had left space at the end to wrestle with her Christmas cards. Very dyslexic, she found proper names a nightmare. She was dickering over whether to send a card to Rupert’s ex-wife, Helen, to heal the breach, and make it easier for Rupert to see Tabitha again, but she wasn’t sure how to spell ‘Rannaldini’. Hearing the strange strangulated croak of a fox’s bark she glanced out of the window. A car was lighting up the trees as it sped along the opposite side of Rupert’s valley when the telephone rang.

Oh, bliss, it must be Rupert. He hated her working late. She must remember to sound sleepy.

‘Is that Taggie?’ asked a slurred voice, so like Rupert’s. ‘Look, I’m getting married to Isa Lovell at five o’clock tomorrow — no, today. Will you come? I’d like some family there, apart from Mummy.’

‘Oh, no, Tab, you can’t.’ Taggie collapsed in horror on the window-seat.

Tab burst into tears. It was several moments before Taggie could elicit the fact that her stepdaughter was having Isa’s baby and Rannaldini, being angelic, had masterminded the wedding and that Tab was madly in love with Isa.

‘But he’s so busy race-riding five days a week and helping Jake’ — at the dreaded name, Taggie jumped as though she’d been stung — ‘with his yard that I don’t see much of him. He doesn’t need me as much as I need him.’

As Tabitha was obviously getting cold feet, Taggie beseeched her to postpone the wedding.

‘You don’t have to marry him, darling. Have the baby here. We’ll all help you look after it.’

‘Daddy wouldn’t allow that,’ sobbed Tab.

‘Of course he would. It’ll kill him, Tab. Anyone else but Isa! You know how he feels about the Lovells — and not having the wedding at Penscombe will break his heart. He was just about to ring you and make it up.’

‘Put him on, then,’ demanded Tab.

‘He’s in Bogotá with Xav.’

Immediately, Taggie knew she’d said the wrong thing, as Tab, who was as jealous of Xavier and Bianca as she was of Marcus, slammed down the telephone.

A disgusting smell of burnt cheese sauce brought Taggie back to earth, as Gertrude the mongrel wandered over stiffly and laid her head on her mistress’s knee. ‘Oh, Gertrude, what am I going to do?’ sobbed Taggie.

‘Is your name really Spinosissimo?’ asked Tristan, as he edged his navy blue Aston on to the M4.

‘Course not,’ said Baby. ‘I got it out of a rose catalogue. My real name’s Brian Smith. But you can’t have Smith alongside the Pavarottis and Domingos on a record sleeve.’

Outrageous, incredibly glamorous, Baby Spinosissimo had burnt-sienna curls, thickly lashed debauched grey eyes, a beaky little nose and a pouting, but wickedly determined, mouth. Slightly plump already, he finished a whole box of Quality Street on the way down, chucking his sweet papers out of the window. He also spent a lot of time on Tristan’s telephone talking to his bookmaker.

Responding to Tristan’s ability to listen, Baby was soon telling him about his sex life. Women ran after him in droves, but the only person he was remotely interested in was his trainer and jockey Isa Lovell.

‘He’s got such a capacity for menace. I can’t sleep at night for imagining him gripping me as he grips those horses.’

Baby also confessed that buying horses for Isa to train had screwed him up with the taxman.

‘Jan one, and the debtor’s prison looms.’

In return Tristan told Baby about his problems with
Don Carlos
.

‘Fat Franco won’t rehearse.’

‘He’s got half Colombia up his nose, for a start,’ said Baby dismissively. ‘And he hates the part of Carlos. Thinks it’s very difficult and not important or sympathetic enough. Domingo feels the same. He dismisses Carlos as a wimp with one solo.’

‘What d’you think?’ asked Tristan.

‘If the part was decently acted by someone hugely attractive…’ Baby smoothed his curls. ‘What else are you up to?’

The Lily in the Valley
was nearing its final cut, said Tristan. Tomorrow he was nipping over to Paris to re-do some dialogue with Claudine Lauzerte.

‘Are you pleased with it?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Tristan, ‘but one has no idea what will happen when it faces an audience.’

‘Claudine Lauzerte,’ Baby rolled his eyes, ‘is a terrific gay icon in Oz.’

They were in deep country now. The sun hadn’t appeared for days, probably singing Otello in Milan. But despite bare trees and lowering skies, the winter wheat spilling like a jade sea over the rich red ploughed fields gave a feeling of spring.

Driving through the russet cathedral town of Rutminster approaching some traffic lights, they drew level with a black Mercedes driven by a young girl. She was wearing a Stop Puppy Farming T-shirt but her pale blonde hair was fantastically garlanded with pink and white flowers like a Botticelli angel. A Labrador puppy as yellow as her hair lay across her thighs. Her seat-belt was undone and she was unashamedly taking slugs out of a vodka bottle. Tristan, who knew he’d seen her before, nearly ran into the car in front.