Appassionata

FIFTY-SIX

Finally on a cold grey morning at the beginning of October, the orchestra were waved off by a disconsolate troop of wives, girlfriends, a few martyred-looking husbands weighed down by baby slings, Brünnhilde Buckle towering over everyone and Marcus waving the paw of a swallowing Trevor.

But just like Cosi Fan Tutte, the moment the buses were out of eyeshot, everyone swapped places particularly on Moulin Rouge and out came the drink and the fags.

‘I’ve got some freshly squeezed orange juice for you,’ said Hilary as she sat down beside Miles, who had just rolled up in an uncharacteristically smart off-white linen suit and an open-necked navy-blue shirt.

‘Doesn’t Miles look nice in stone?’ said Clare, as she collapsed beside Dixie.

‘Nicer still if he were turned to it.’

‘At least that colour won’t show up the scurf.’

‘We’re all going on a workaholiday,’ sang Flora to Viking as they sailed past Parker’s, displaying frightful autumn fashions, in burgundy, rust and snuff-brown.

Out in the country, autumn was busy daubing the woods in orange and yellow. Rooks and gulls argued over newly ploughed fields. Behind veils of little cobwebs, the hedgerows blushed with berries. An ironic cheer went up as the buses approached Heathrow and were overtaken by a sleek black limo with Abby immersed in Beethoven’s Ninth in the back. Maestros usually travelled separately, going first class on plane and train and sometimes staying with the soloists in more expensive hotels than the orchestra, which would tax the ingenuity of Abby’s would-be seducers even further.

‘Our fright will last two hours,’ said Noriko consulting the schedule as they queued to check in.

Totally ignoring Miles’s twenty-kilo limit, Clare rocked up with four suitcases and three tennis rackets weighing one hundred and twenty kilos, confidently expecting brawny Dixie to hump it all around for her. Being her first tour, she hadn’t appreciated that musicians never carry anyone else’s stuff, or that Dixie would be far too busy competing with the other men to carry Abby’s six suitcases of scores (Beethoven’s Ninth was larger than the Chinese telephone book) and clothes for each concert, plus a second change for dinner with the ambassador later.

‘Did you pack your suitcase yourself?’ the check-in girl asked Randy.

‘Of course.’

‘He did not,’ said Candy indignantly.

Militant Moll went puce in the face when a customs man insisted she carried her vibrator in her hand luggage.

‘What’s wrong with Ninion?’ chorused the Celtic Mafia.

Miss Parrott scuttled through the passport check; she didn’t want Dimitri or anyone else to discover her real age.

Abby was touched when every man in the orchestra converged to lift her hand luggage into the lockers and sit next to her on the flight.

Francis bought her a copy of the Independent, Old Henry, some glacier mints. Randy, who was intending to spend the two thousand on a new set of golf clubs, to Clare’s irritation, upstaged everyone by buying Abby some Amarige body lotion in duty free, and murmuring that he hoped he might have the privilege to rub it in during the next week.

Poor Cathie Jones, always airsick, and green before take-off, was cringing at the back of the plane. Putting as much distance between her and himself as possible, Carmine shot up the front to ask Abby’s view on his solo in the trumpet fanfare in Rachel’s Requiem. Watching him, Blue slid in beside Cathie with a bag of barley sugars.

‘Talk to me, and you won’t have time to throw op.’

Hilary and Juno were infuriated. Having bought Hello! and Tatler they found endless pictures of Clare and her father on 12 August.

‘I’ve always made shooting lunches for Daddy,’ explained Clare apologetically. ‘If I’d objected he’d have shot me as well.’

‘Isn’t that Dixie peering out of the bracken?’ hissed Juno.

‘No, it’s a herd of Daddy’s Highland cattle,’ said Clare airily, in all senses of the word, because they’d taken off.

Even before the first drinks trolley started rumbling down the aisle, Miles was on his feet.

‘This is an important tour. Please remember you are an English,’ (loud boos) ‘I mean British,’ (more boos) ‘orchestra and behave like ambassadors for your country and exercise decorum on all occasions.’

Exactly on cue, Randy and Candy emerged from the lavatory, straightening their clothes and Miles’s exhortation that they must rout out hooliganism was drowned in howls and catcalls.

‘An important tour,’ ploughed on Miles.

‘Particularly as we’re going to witness the return of L’Appassionata as a soloist,’ quavered Old Henry, who wanted the two thousand for a new bow, to loud cheers all round.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ wondered Flora, as different players queued up to ask Abby if, after the concert, she’d like a personally guided tour of the lovely old city of Seville, which, after all, had been the setting for Don Giovanni’s ill-fated scrap with the Commandatore.

Meanwhile, beside Julian, Mary, eight months pregnant, was embroidering a sampler for the new baby.

‘D’you think she’s going to explode?’ whispered Cherub nervously to Noriko.

‘I have just seen a pig fly past the window,’ Viking muttered to Blue, as they waited for their luggage in Seville. ‘Carmine has just forked out a hundred pesetas for a trolley for Abby’s cases. This is going to be a fight to the death.’

The Seville sky was the palest blue, as though it had been through the washing-machine a thousand times. As they chugged past ancient tawny houses, and streets lined with glossy green trees, Viking leant out of the bus and picked an orange. It was much hotter than Rutminster. This time everyone was housed in the same hotel. Before the rehearsal, Abby had a quick swim in the hotel pool. Every man in the RSO seemed to have the same idea, showing off with high dives and flashy crawls.

Old Henry, dreaming of his new bow, dog-paddled eagerly around Abby. Carmine kept vanishing under the water, only deterred from groping her by Viking, who wouldn’t have dreamt of crinkling his hair by swimming before a concert, but who prowled round the edge of the pool keeping an eye on his quarry.

At six o’clock there was a panic instead of a rehearsal, because the cherry-red RSO van hadn’t arrived with the instruments and all the music. The real heroes of the tour, Charlton Handsome and his humpers and roadies, had been driving from Rutminster since Saturday morning. They had been held up at the border, where Customs, assuming they were a rock band, upended the entire van for drugs.

As the van finally drew up outside the Seville concert hall, frenzied musicians fell on it, terrified their precious instruments might have gone astray. Charlton was rolling the big bass drum down the ramp, when he was pushed aside by Dimitri, frantic to find his Guarnieri, vowing they’d never be parted again.

‘Just fuck off, Knickers,’ Charlton was now saying to an hysterical Nicholas, ‘or I’ll drive the ‘ole lot into the river.

‘Fanks, love,’ he added to Flora, who’d brought out a six-pack of iced beer.

‘I will not have drinking during working hours,’ spluttered Miles, rolling up in a dinner-jacket.

‘I’ll ’ave you remember, Mister Brian-Knowles,’ snapped back Charlton, ‘that while you was shacked up all cosy last night wiv Lady ‘Ilary, me and the boys,’ he pointed to an ice pick and shovel attached to the inside of the lorry, ‘was digging our way outa the Pyrenees.’

Miles went purple, particularly when Flora burst out laughing.

‘What’s in that box?’ she asked, as Charlton relieved her of another can of beer.

‘Viola players — you get more in if you slice them thinly.’

The concert was a massive success. John Lill, the soloist, played the Rachmaninov so beautifully he had the very formal, straight-backed audience yelling their dark sleek heads off.

Abby was nervous how they’d react to Rachel’s Requiem, but they listened enraptured, and when Viking launched into ‘Rachel’s Lament’, they all started to clap as though he were Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun Dorma’, so Viking played it again, and the applause at the end went on for ten minutes.

As the roadies loaded up again for the drive to Granada, Charlton told Julian he’d heard that ‘triffic tune’ twice on the bar radio during the concert. Francis the Good Loser, climbing up a lamp-post in the main square to get a better reception on the World Service, nearly got arrested later in the evening.

‘Listen,’ he thrust out his radio.

‘Ah, “Rachel’s Lament”, very good tune,’ chorused the ring of policemen, giving him a round of applause when he played it on his fiddle.

As Abby came into the hotel around one o’clock after an official dinner with John Lill and the Mayor of Seville, the foyer was suddenly full of male musicians. Jerry and Quinton both wanted words about their solos in Beethoven’s Ninth, and individually wondered if they could run through them in Abby’s suite.

‘No, you fucking can’t,’ Viking was at Abby’s elbow, waving her key. ‘You pinched that solo from Cyril, Quinton, you bloody sort it out.’

‘What about a drink?’ he murmured to Abby, two minutes later as he opened her door.

Abby havered, then said wistfully, ‘I ought to get an early night, and I’ve gotta practise the Mozart — it’s more difficult than I figured, I’m terrified of letting Rodney down.’

Or yourself, thought Viking.

He wasn’t going to push it. Instead he gave her the orange he’d picked from the bus, and made her promise to have dinner with him later in the week.

On tours, as on away fixtures, the orchestra tended to split into two groups. Pond Life was epitomized by Peter Plumpton, Simon, Hilary, Militant Moll (and a reluctant Ninion), along with others who were either desperately broke or tight with money. This group, because breakfast was the only meal provided, came down, stuffed themselves, then loaded rolls, cheese, ham, yoghurt, apples, even cartons of decanted prunes into carrier bags, and lived off that for the rest of the day. This meant they could go home with enough totted-up lunch and dinner allowance to pay the gas bill or buy a microwave. They never went out boozing.

In utter contrast, Moulin Rouge led by the Celtic Mafia were hell bent on whooping it up.

‘If you make breakfast,’ as Dixie was fond of saying, ‘you’re not regarded as one of the lads.’

It would be hard to decide which group disapproved more strongly of the other. With the making of Abby on the agenda, however, the two groups became blurred with Ninion realizing he could buy an inferno of microwaves with the two thousand, and Francis appreciating he’d be able to pay for a hip operation for his wife, instead of waiting a year for one on the NHS. Peter Plumpton had already earmarked a button-backed sofa in an antique shop in Eldercombe.

To add to the tension as the days passed, the schedule was absolutely punishing. Seville, Granada, Santiago, Corunna, in four days, with Madrid, Barcelona and Toledo to come, which meant rising at dawn to catch the coach to get to the airport or station followed by a long journey, no time to unpack before a rehearsal in a strange hall, with hardly any more time to change, tart up or snatch something to eat before the concert. After which it was natural to have a few drinks and let off steam. Staggering into bed around three o’clock in the morning, they all had to be up at crack of dawn to get on the coach to the next town the following day.

The tour was an even worse nightmare for Miles and Nicholas, who not only had to keep Moulin Rouge in order, but also had to hand out and retrieve all the hotel-room keys at every stop, get suitcases into the right rooms, and drag musicians out of their beds into the coaches as alarm calls were increasingly ignored.

No matter how many signs Knickers put up at each concert hall, the buggers still wandered round bleating: ‘Where’s the stage? Where’s the changing-room? Where’s the bog?’ which was odd when they never had any difficulty finding a pub or restaurant the instant the concert was over. There was a frightful row in Corunna because breakfast consisted only of croissants, coffee and orange juice. Pond Life, with nothing to live on for the rest of the day, nearly refused to get on the coach taking them to the station.

Abby’s suitors got very excited in Santiago, when Viking started a rumour that she’d gone up the cathedral spire with Blue. Having panted to the top, with Old Henry and El Creepo nearly dying of heart attacks in the process, they found only Militant Moll bawling out Ninion, because she’d caught him peering into the women’s changing-room. With the coast clear, meanwhile, Viking had belted round to Abby’s hotel, only to find she’d gone out shopping.

Her seducers had principally drawn a blank in the past few days because after the first night Abby’d been staying in different hotels.

Tonight, however, they’d all be together in the Picasso Grand in Madrid. So many people were trying to bed her, in fact, that Abby-baiting had been suspended as the chief orchestra pastime and mobbing-up Miles had taken its place.

In Corunna, a pedal had fallen off the piano and Miles had managed to put it back.

‘First time you’ve lain between a pair of legs and been able to find the right aperture,’ shouted Dixie to cheers all round.

On the express to Madrid, which looked like a long grey electric shaver, Cherub charmed the guard into letting him use the Tannoy.

‘I’m afraid,’ he announced in his shrill voice, ‘that this train has run out of bog paper. Anyone in need — particularly anyone who had Squid Corunna in the Sir John Moore Wine Bar last night — is advised to apply to Miles Brian-Knowles for RSO contracts which are probably worth considerably less.’

Roused by guffaws, Miles stopped telling Hilly how much he was looking forward to showing her Guernica and the other Picassos in the Prado.

Julian, halfway through War and Peace, was sitting next to Mary who had nearly finished her sampler.

‘Dear Little One,’ read Flora over Mary’s shoulder, ‘I wish to give you two things: roots and wings. Oh, that’s lovely.’

Flora’s eyes filled with tears. Roots and wings should be the basis for any happy relationship. She suddenly wondered how George was getting on in England and hoped Trevor was OK.

Her reverie was interrupted by Cherub’s shrill voice over the Tannoy again, interspersed with fits of giggles.

‘This is a special message for all members of the RSO. Tonight’s rehearsal has been cancelled.’

An enraged Miles then had to hurtle up and down the train, denying this and thrusting aside garlic-reeking peasants, sleek businessmen, and Randy and Candy, once again straightening their clothes as they emerged from the loo.

As the train stopped at a station Miles saw Cherub belting down the platform in the other direction.

‘This is your last life, Wilson,’ he yelled out of the window.

‘Look at Thrilary, mouth vanished altogether,’ murmured Viking to Blue. ‘She is being screwed by Miles.’

As reddy-brown fields and orange, pink and green rock like vegetable pâté flashed by, Steve was waving the rule book at poor Knickers. ‘An orchestra marches on its stomach,’ he was shouting. ‘That breakfast was a diabolical travesty.’

‘Foxie is so hungry,’ piped up Flora, making her puppet fox clutch his furry tummy, ‘that he’s going to eat Miles in a minute.’

‘Gimme that fox.’ Dixie, still plastered from the night before, snatched and threw Foxie to Randy, who threw him down the open compartment to Davie who threw him to Barry, who threw him to Carmine, who threw him out of the window, whereupon a screaming Flora pulled the communication cord, and the orchestra never made the Madrid rehearsal at all. Hilary was absolutely hopping because she was not going to see Guernica.

‘Why bother?’ said Viking. ‘It’s all around you.’

The result was a duff Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The only thing which excited the fur-coated Madrid audience was Davie Buckle, his fluffy white drum heads frenziedly dancing on the surface of his kettle drums, going beserk in the scherzo.

‘Apart from Beethoven Nine and The Rite of Spring, all music is piffle,’ Davie told anyone who would listen, as he got legless afterwards in the bar of the Picasso Grand.

It looked as though Abby’s suitors thronging the foyer just after midnight were going to be disappointed again. Returning from dinner with King Carlos, she had escaped to her suite up the back stairs.

‘No-one is going to get L’Appassionata into bed this evening either,’ announced Viking firmly. ‘She’s got to practise the Mozart concerto for tomorrow night.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ muttered Davie.

As the week progressed, Abby in fact had hardly noticed her suitors, even Viking, because she was increasingly terrified about playing again in public. She was now so engrossed in perfecting the langorous trills of the adagio, she didn’t even notice the bulky figure on the balcony outside. Davie, having downed twelve pints of beer, and dropped his mobile down the lavatory trying to ring Brünnhilde in England, had intrepidly climbed across from the next-door balcony, and settled down to wait for Abby to finish practising.

Three hours later, she wandered next door into her bedroom. Finding Old Henry sitting up in her bed, wearing only pyjama bottoms and reading Murder on the Nile, she was so bombed that she thought she’d strayed into the wrong room.

‘Oh Henry, just the person I wanted to see. I’m so sorry to barge in, but could you possibly help me with the dynamics in the rondo? Mozart puts in so few marks.’

‘It’s the same with his later piano concertos,’ Henry put a book mark in Murder on the Nile. ‘He leaves it up to you.’

Even when they’d sorted out the problem and Abby asked Henry to rub tiger balm into her aching neck and shoulders, he made no pass.

‘She’s playing better than ever,’ he sighed to a lurking band of suitors when he finally left her room.

‘That two thousand could have bought you a bow and paid your gas bill,’ said Barry reprovingly.

‘Some things are more important than gas bills,’ said Old Henry.

Abby took a long time to go to sleep. She was worried that every time she called the cottage to ask after the cats, she got her own voice on the answering-machine. Where the hell was Marcus? And although she doted on Rodney, she was depressed that the RSO were so longing to see him in Barcelona tomorrow. All the old anecdotes and catch phrases were coming out.

‘Why are we so happy, boys and girls? Because Uncle Rodney’s in charge. Where’s Dixie? When he arrives tell him he’s much too loud.’

Programmes of Rodney’s concerts before the war; photographs of him looking dashing in the Navy or with great musicians: Solomon, Kreisler, Rubinstein, Callas and Gigli had been collected and framed. Messages of love were pouring in from the living: Domingo, Pavarotti, Kiri, Alfred Brendel, Simon Rattle, Pablo Gonzales, and Menuhin. They all loved Rodney. He had brought enormous fun to music.

Forget the Bennies, the Maria Kusaks, the Bill Thackeries, and the Junos, thought Abby bitterly, Rodney in all his life never worked as hard as I do.

Restlessly she picked up a fax from George that had just been shoved under the door. Rachel’s Requiem was Number Twenty in the classical charts, people were playing it on pop channels as well, and even more amazing, Sonny Parker’s Interruption Suite for lavatory chain, coughing, etc., had been nominated for a Gramophone award. The Observer had also got wind of her come-back and done a big piece headed: OUR OWN ABBY ROSEN.

Abby felt happier and she fell into such a deep sleep, she didn’t even wake when dozing Davie fell off the balcony and sprained his ankle.

FIFTY-SEVEN

No-one was more on the ball than George Hungerford. He understood balance sheets, had an instant grasp of any financial problem, never missed a crooked picture nor an appointment. He also drove the hardest bargains. The deal had been all. His first marriage had collapsed because he was a workaholic. To survive the pain, he had worked even harder.

But now the RSO had gone like Bonnie Lesley to spread their conquests further, it was time for him to take stock of their future. Could they possibly survive even until Christmas? The latest estimate for the repairs and revamp of H.P. Hall was five million pounds. It was also essential that he devoted some time to his other companies, which, after all, brought in the dosh. Ten acres in central Manchester couldn’t run themselves.

But George, who had never had a daydream in his life, found himself hopelessly inattentive. Only this morning he had found a file he had accused Jessica of losing in the office fridge, and his boxer shorts in the pedal dustbin at home instead of in the washing-machine.

He had even started reading horoscopes and poetry and gazing at the clump of beeches in the park whose leaves were turning the same red-gold as Flora’s hair. He ought to be looking for companies to buy and properties to snap up, but his mind, like Scarlatti’s Adonis, had turned from hunting to love. Frequently he was cast into an abyss of self-doubt. How could such a bright, beautiful young lady possibly fancy an uncouth, working-class, middle-aged, North-Country lout?

All that he had to go on was that she had once called him a really sweet guy, but since then she’d scuttled away from him, and he’d been far too shy to ring her up.

He should at least have been working out how they could cut costs on the orchestra’s trip up north for the Appleton Piano Competition; instead he sent for the holiday lists, and chose the weeks his Principal Viola, El Creepo, was away to programme Harold in Italy and Elgar’s In the South overture, both of which had wonderful solos for Flora.

‘Oh, she does teach the torches to burn bright,’ murmured George.

Then Miss Priddock had barged in and announced that the soprano who was singing in The Messiah next month had decided to cry off because she was expecting triplets.

‘That’s a shame,’ said George, ‘I was just brooshing oop on my obstetrical skills. Still she might have suspended belief when she sang, “A Virgin Shall Conceive”. Oh well… Flora can take her place. We’ll have to pay her extra though.’

‘Judgin’ by the way she’s been behavin’ on tour, Ay would have thought Flora would find it even more difficult to portray a virgin,’ said Miss Priddock with a sniff.

‘That was quite uncalled for,’ snapped George. ‘Get out.’

Miss Priddock flounced off, squawking like a wet hen. George picked up The Times.

‘Venus is a morning object,’ he read in the monthly astronomy round-up of the stars.

How could the Goddess of Love be so prosaically straitjacketed? In George’s heaven, she was on twenty-four-hour duty.

Back came Miss Priddock, ten minutes later, exuding smugness and reproach in equal proportions, as she ushered in Gilbert and Gwynneth, whom George had clearly forgotten were coming. By this time, he was drinking a large Scotch, with his feet on the table, feeding strips of smoked salmon to a purring John Drummond, and watching a video of Flora singing The Creation.

Gwynneth and Gilbert promptly went into raptures over the way Rannaldini had held the orchestra together after Hermione’s disappearance — surely the mark of a great conductor.

‘The orchestra played great,’ said George icily. ‘They saved the performance because they luv Flora and their pride is sooch they wouldn’t allow themselves to produce anything less than a rare defiant performance.’

Gilbert and Gwynneth, who’d come to discuss the merger, or even dropping one orchestra altogether, which would save them even more money, were very disappointed. Rannaldini had given them to understand that George would co-operate in every way.

‘Man’s only interested in money,’ he had told them.

Listening to Gilbert droning on and Gwynneth smacking her pale fat lips over Miss Priddock’s ginger bread, George started fidgetting with his right hand drawer, which opened to show a photograph of Ruth. George gazed at her perfect face for a long time. Underneath was his passport.

Gilbert and Gwynneth were even more put out, when George announced he’d have to break up the meeting because he was off to Barcelona to give the orchestra moral support.

‘They’re playing chumpion,’ he went on. ‘Rachel’s Requiem’s in the Top Twenty in its first week — that’s because Abby’s photograph’s on the sleeve, and I want to wish Rodney a happy birthday.’

‘Oh, I wish I’d sent him a card,’ said Gwynneth looking caring, and deciding to forgive Rodney for his disparaging remarks about the Arts Council. ‘I draw them myself,’ she went on. ‘People often frame my cards.’

‘Who will hold the fort while you’re away?’ chuntered Gilbert.

‘I’ll be sending Miles back,’ said George, grabbing his briefcase and car keys. ‘After all, it’s the fort what counts.’ Good God, he was even making jokes like Flora now. ‘If it’s urgent,’ he handed a piece of paper to Miss Priddock, ‘you’ll find me on this number.’

Gilbert and Gwynneth exchanged glances. They found Miles much easier to deal with.

‘Don’t forget the board meeting on Friday,’ Miss Priddock called after him.

‘I’d no idea he was going,’ said Jessica, when she returned from the dentist — then she whistled as far as her frozen jaws would allow. ‘Golly, that’s Ruth’s number he’s left. I’d forgotten she has a house near Marbella. Perhaps they’re getting back together again. He’s been ever so distracted recently. He didn’t even shout at me when I forgot to buy his lottery tickets.’

Eyes were getting smaller with tiredness as the R.S.O. landed at Barcelona Airport, waists growing bigger. The musicians were sleepwalking, nodding off on any available sofa, armchair or bench.

‘I had warbling singers on either side of me last night,’ grumbled Simon. ‘Wonder if they sell sleeping-pills off prescription?’

‘Wish I could buy some homesick pills,’ sighed Julian.

‘I cut myself shaving this morning,’ said Randy, who was still drunk from last night. ‘My red eyes have nearly gone white again.’

‘Baa, baa, baa,’ bleated Dixie, as the entire orchestra, like zombies, followed him blindly into the airport Gents.

Despite Knickers racing round like a collie nipping everyone’s ankles, it was half an hour before they all meandered out to the waiting coaches, eating chocolate, reading newspapers, putting new film in their cameras. Miles was absolutely fed up with them. Half of them had overslept and nearly missed the plane that morning.

‘If anyone loses their boarding passes or their hotel keys, or forgets to pay their bar bills once more, their pay will be docked,’ he yelled to each coach-load in turn. ‘And tomorrow morning I want you all to line up outside the hotel at six-thirty so we can take a roll-call.’

‘What about a roll-in-the-hay call?’ shouted Randy from the back of Moulin Rouge. As they drove past battlements and palm trees along the seafront, Dixie yelled, ‘Don’t forget to declare Hilly.’

‘Sneaks and lechers, come away, come away, come, come, come away,’ sang Cherub, going into fits of giggles which set the whole coach off.

Hilary stopped writing postcards about the cathedral in Madrid.

‘Why d’you all reduce everything to your own disgusting level?’ she hissed.

You’ll pay for this, thought Miles furiously. Every single one of you.

He was even crosser three-quarters of an hour later. As Flora was struggling up the steep, narrow cobbled street to the hotel, weighed down by a heavy suitcase, her viola and a large bottle of Fundador, presented to her by a waiter last night, she felt a hand taking her suitcase and turned in amazement. No musician ever carried anyone else’s stuff. Then she dropped the Fundador with an almighty crash, for there stood George, sweating in a pin-striped suit, and blushing as much as she was.

‘I thought you were in Rutminster?’

‘I was. I thought I’d come and wish Rodney many happy returns.’

For a moment they gazed at each other as brandy streamed down the street.

‘Sorry about the bottle,’ said George, clicking his fingers at the hotel porter to come and sweep it up.

‘Oh, it’s just good, clean Fundador,’ said Flora, belting into the hotel.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Viking, Dixie, Blue and Randy, who’d been following Flora up the hill.

‘That’s going to cut down our fun and games,’ said Blue, dropping to his knees and pretending to lick up the Fundador.

‘Why the hell isn’t he at home running the orchestra?’ said Dixie.

‘Into the ground,’ said Randy.

Disloyally, they forgot that if it hadn’t been for George’s indefatigable fund-raising efforts they would never have been able to go on tour.

‘Perhaps he’s after Abby,’ said Dixie.

‘Well, he’s not going to win the two grand,’ snapped Viking.

‘No, he’s after the Steel Elf,’ said Randy.

As Hilary handed her postcards to the hotel receptionist Viking noticed the top one was to Rannaldini in Czechoslovakia.

‘Our shit has reached Bohemia,’ he muttered to Blue. ‘I reckon Gilbert, Gwynneth, Rannaldini and Miles are all in cahoots. I better have a serious word with Rodney.’

Miles was absolutely livid to be dispatched home by George. Telling Hilary to keep an eye on things and chronicle every misdemeanour, he flew northwards to Rutminster freezing like an iceberg as he went.

Tiredness was forgotten as the orchestra dumped their bags and surged off in great expectations to meet Rodney.

The beautiful little palace of music could have been designed especially for Rodney’s birthday. Stucco horses with rolling eyes romped high above the stage. Seats rose in tiers fantastically decorated with different coloured sugar tulips. From a ceiling, embossed with scarlet-and-white roses, hung a vast Tiffany lamp, glittering with amber, emerald and kingfisher-blue glass. On the faded terracotta mural, curving round behind the stage, garlanded nymphs in long flowery dresses played flutes and harps, violins and triangles, their eyes closed in deepest trance, bewitched by their music.

‘What maidens loth? What mad pursuit?… What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?’ murmured Flora, trying to tighten her strings with a trembling hand. What the hell was George doing here?

Rodney’s dressing-room was already piled high with coloured envelopes and brightly wrapped presents. The RSO had clubbed together and given him a Victorian station-master’s cap and a new midnight-blue velvet cloak with a cherry-red lining. A huge iced cake in the shape of a train carrying eighty candles would be wheeled on after the concert. A florist was busy weaving dark red roses and white jasmine in and out of the rostrum.

‘It’s unlucky to use red-and-white flowers,’ said Miss Parrott in alarm.

But her concern was drowned in a deafening cheer as Rodney shuffled on, Beatle cap over one eye, leaning heavily on George’s arm. The musicians who’d worked with him in the past were shocked how he’d aged, particularly when they saw what an effort it was for him to climb onto the rostrum and collapse into his chair.

But as they launched into ‘Happy Birthday’, specially orchestrated by Peter Plumpton, Rodney struggled up from his chair, stretched out his arms, putting his head on one side, and smiling with such sweetness and roguish delight, they were all reassured.

‘Oh my dear children — ’ wafting English Fern, he mopped his eyes with a lemon-yellow silk handkerchief — ‘you have no idea how excited I am to see you all again, and some, too, I haven’t met before: great artists.’ He beamed down at Julian and Dimitri. ‘Learning the cello myself has taught me how clever all you string players are.’ Then, glancing at the back of the First Violins, continued, ‘and you, pretty child, must be Noriko, and that lovely little redhead must be Flora.’

Aware of George watching from the stalls, Flora cringed into the violas with a weak smile.

Then, to even louder cheers, Rodney whipped out a ‘Save the RSO’ banner, waving it above his head.

‘We’ll have no more talk of mergers. I have written to my friend, John Merger — ’ the orchestra giggled in delight — ‘telling him it’s simply not on. What are they going to call this merged orchestra? The RSCCO? — stands for Royal Society for the Continued Cruelty to Orchestras — sums up that gruesome twosome, Gilbert and Gwynneth. I hope their ears are burning because I’m flying back to Rutminster to box them next week.

‘You are a symphony orchestra,’ he went on, fierce for a second, ‘and will remain so. As an encore tonight we will play the beginning of the second movement of Tchaik Five, one of the greatest symphonies ever written, with a great horn solo from a great player.’ He blew a kiss at Viking.

‘But as you all know that, and the other pieces, Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote backwards, let’s play the Mozart. Not a day goes by,’ he added in a stage-whisper as Abby strolled in with her fiddle under her arm to a chorus of wolf-whistles, ‘that I don’t envy you having such a gorgeous popsy as musical director. Isn’t she lovely?’

‘She certainly is,’ bellowed Abby’s suitors.

As if she were shrugging off her role as conductor, Abby had abandoned her severe, often deliberately desexing gear, for a clinging orange vest and the shortest, tightest, brown suede skirt, just acquired in a Barcelona boutique. Her newly washed black gypsy curls danced loose down her shoulders. Terror and excitement simultaneously lit her glowing face: the heaven and hell of performance.

‘My dear,’ sighed Rodney, ‘what a time to bring those legs out of hiding. I’ll never concentrate. That was a wonderful century you made against the CCO last week, Bill,’ he went on, keeping up the patter, ‘tiddle, om, pom, pom. Did you know carthorse was an anagram of orchestra? Tiddle, om, pom, pom, ready darling?’

Abby nodded. Surreptitiously, mysteriously, always when a great star is playing, the hall fills up. Stage hands, doormen, cleaners with mops, admin staff were already gathering in the red velvet boxes and creeping into the stalls.

Rodney raised his baton a couple of inches and brought it down. There was an explosion of sound. Playing the lovely but comparatively undemanding horn accompaniment, Viking listened in wonder. No composer but Mozart, no musician except Abby, could express such sweetness, such caressing tenderness, such extremes of sadness and joy. He watched her breasts and golden arms quivering as her bow darted across the strings, the voluptuous swing of her suede hips, her tossing shining hair, and the rapacious absorption on her proud, hawklike face, and was filled with lust as well as admiration.

Abby was a good conductor, but her heart constantly fought her head, like a swan struggling across land to some destination. But when she played she flew, all heart, totally committed, as bewitched as the nymphs on the wall.

‘We’ll be looking for a new musical director,’ sighed Old Henry, tapping his bow against Francis’s chair-back. ‘Can’t deprive the world of a sound like that.’

As he joined in the rapturous applause, George was shocked to see how Rodney was sweating, and how much brown make-up came off on the lemon-yellow silk handkerchief when he mopped his brow. He was a ghastly colour, but outwardly full of pride and joy for his protégée.

‘I can die happy now,’ he told Abby. ‘The sorrow of that middle movement was almost unbearable. And if I hadn’t known you were the RSO, boys and girls, I could have sworn you were the Berlin Phil.’

‘It’s because you’re back, Sir Rod,’ shouted Dixie, then remembering he was trying to pull Abby, ‘and because we’ve got a great soloist.’

George stepped forward. ‘You must rest, Maestro.’

‘Think I’d better, journey took it out of me. Got a lovely chambermaid as siesta-fodder back at the hotel. Got to be as fresh as a daisy for the party later. Lots of champagne, lovely grub: I can open all my presents, and we’ll all behave as badly as possible, toodle-oo everyone.’

Waving his flag, he adjusted his Beatle cap at a more rakish angle. As he was helped down from the rostrum, the musicians surged forward to shake his hand and show how happy they were he was back.

Clutching the door leading to the stage, he patted the head of his pantomime cow, whose furry black-and-white body was slumped over the rail waiting to take part in the encore.

‘Nice to see my old girl again. Got her a Swiss bell to wear tonight. Connaissez-vous Schoenberg, Madame Vache? No, that’s French, must remember to speak Spanish. Must stop this merger, dear boy, Rannaldini’s such a shit,’ he added, clapping a hand on George’s shoulder, but using it more as a support.

Abby ran after them.

‘I love you, Rodney,’ she stammered.

‘And I you, darling.’

‘Was I really OK?’

‘Better than ever. Utterly breathtaking. Oh, there’s Charlton, how are you?’

‘Great, and great to see you, Sir Rod. Fanks for the Scotch, biggest fucking bottle I’ve ever seen.’

‘You deserve it, dear boy, after flogging all those miles.’

‘Oh, damn you,’ sighed Abby, as a departing Rodney wriggled like an old badger into the back of the waiting limo. ‘Why d’you always have to show me up by being so nice to everyone?’

She never saw him again.

In the men’s changing-room, musicians were combing hair over bald patches, running electric razors over their faces, spraying deodorant on earlier layers, cleaning teeth, fighting for the mirror to tie their ties. Those with good bodies wandered round in their underpants. Those already dressed were warming up in the passage outside the conductor’s room. Viking was playing ‘The Teddy Bears Picnic’ when George arrived, looking grim and very shaken, and dragged him into an empty-dressing room. Just as he was leaving the hotel, Rodney had died of a massive heart attack.

‘He was so excited,’ George’s voice cracked, ‘his last words were, “I moosn’t be late for my dear children.”’

The colour drained from Viking’s face; for a second he clung onto a chair, his eyes closed, fighting back the tears.

‘Oh Jesus, I don’t believe it. Thank God we saw him one last time. This is terrible.’ Then he pulled himself together. ‘Poor little Abby.’

‘I better go and tell her.’

‘I’ll tell her. You tell the orchestra.’

‘Ought we to cancel the concert?’

‘Certainly not, Rodney’s worst thing was disappointing people.’

The orchestra were devastated — most of them in tears.

Steve abandoned his noisy row with Knickers about the musicians not having had long enough between rehearsal and concert.

Abby had just emerged from the shower and was wrapped in a very inadequate olive-green towel, when Viking walked in. At first she didn’t believe him.

‘It’s just another of your obnoxious jokes.’

Then she went into such raving, screaming hysterics that Viking was very reluctantly forced to slap her face before she collapsed sobbing wildly in his arms.

‘I know how you loved him, sweetheart, I know, I know, I’ll look after you.’

Gradually he calmed her down, pouring her a large brandy from Rodney’s cupboard, then saying he hoped he wouldn’t get sacked for hitting the conductor.

‘Cut it out,’ sobbed Abby. ‘Trust you to make jokes.’

‘I loved him, too, sweetheart. What are you doing?’ he demanded as Abby reached for her new suede skirt.

‘Going to Lucerne to take care of Gisela. She’s worked for him for forty years, for chrissake.’

‘You can’t, not yet. You’ve got to go on tonight.’

‘Don’t be insane, George must cancel.’

‘Rodney would expect it.’

‘What about my solo?’

‘Mozart played it and conducted at the same time. If you prefer, Julian could play your solo.’

‘Like hell he will. Oh Viking, I can’t believe it.’ She broke down again.

Hearing weeping coming from the conductor’s room, Hilary turned to Juno.

‘She must have been Rodney’s mistress to be so upset.’

‘Who’s in there?’ asked Carmine.

‘Viking,’ said Hilary.

‘Trust Viking to cash in on some poor guy’s death to win his bloody bet.’

The next moment Blue had Carmine against the wall.

‘You dirty basstard,’ he hissed.

Deathly pale in her short pink chiffon dress, Abby looked like a lost masquerader. She left the rose-and-jasmine-woven rostrum empty and conducted from the soloist’s position, from which she could see the shock and deep distress on the faces in the audience, many of whom had flown in from all over the world.

Cathie Jones brought all her sadness to the solo in Romeo and Juliet. Abby didn’t play the Mozart that followed with as much dash as she had in rehearsal, but even though she had to conduct it at the same time, there was an added depth and sorrow.

She’s playing a requiem, thought Viking. It was so private, so other worldly, that for a second he was so moved he felt he was going to lose it.

Everyone was so distraught about Rodney that few people appreciated that this was Abby’s first time playing in public again.

Mozart was followed by Don Quixote. Tears streamed unashamedly down Dimitri’s face, as he played the part of the Don, Abby nearly broke down, too, as she introduced the piece:

‘In the words of your greatest novel,’ she told the audience in Spanish, “I have battled, I have made mistakes, but I have lived my life the best I can, according to the world as I see it.” That sums up the Rodney we all knew and loved.’

Neither Viking nor Cherub had the heart to get inside the pantomime cow, so the orchestra played ‘Nimrod’, Rodney’s favourite tune. He had always chided the RSO for playing it too slowly.’

‘It’s an ode to a mighty hunter, he’s not dead yet, for goodness’ sake.’

Finally, as a mark of respect, the vast audience filed out in silence.

The usual crowd of well-wishers and ghouls were queuing outside Abby’s dressing-room. The Press were massing outside. Nicholas was having great difficulty keeping them at bay. Viking caused chuntering and a lot of raised eyebrows when he barged to the front of the queue. Inside he found Abby in tears again.

‘Oh Viking, I can’t believe it,’ she wailed, as he put his arms round her. ‘D’you think the orchestra’ll ever love me as much as him?’

This made Viking laugh.

‘Not till you leave them, sweetheart. Let’s go and get wasted,’ then when Abby hesitated, ‘we were his favourites, he’d have wanted it.’

‘Give me five minutes to have a shower,’ said Abby, asking as he went towards the door, ‘Was my solo OK?’

‘Brilliant, and the conducting.’

‘I guess I was just the catalyst.’

‘In that case,’ Viking smiled slightly, ‘I’m a member of the Catalyst’s Protection League.’

Abby was shocked she looked so beautiful and as she smothered herself in Amarige, turning herself on by her caresses, she could already feel Rodney’s ghost egging her on.

‘Go on, darling, it’s worth a try.’

‘I love you, Rodney,’ she pleaded, ‘and I love Viking, please forgive me, you always said as long as we played well, you didn’t mind what we got up to below the waist.’

Tiredness hit Flora in the form of the blackest depression. Having bolted in embarrassment when George arrived, she hadn’t seen him to talk to since, because he’d been so busy looking after Rodney and then sorting out the ramifications of his death. All she had to listen to was pesky members of the orchestra speculating as to why he’d come out in the first place. On the coach home from the concert, she found out. Slumped in a seat clutching Foxie, and her black dress, she overheard Hilary and Miss Parrott whispering behind her about Rodney’s death being ‘a merciful release’.

‘Ay will miss him,’ sighed Miss Parrott. ‘Even George seemed upset, and he hardly knew him. Is he stayin’ at our hotel?’

‘No, riveting news.’ Hilary paused, aware of Flora, who pointedly lolled her head on one side and pretended to snore. ‘You’ll never guess — ’ Hilary went on — ‘he’s staying with his wife, Ruth. She’s got a hacienda,’ Hilary prided herself on her pronunciation, ‘near Marbella.’

‘I thought they were divorced.’

‘No, only separated, and only by her choice. He’s mad about her, Miles says, got pictures of her all over his home.’

‘How romantic if they’ve got together again,’ sighed Miss Parrott.

‘Bit of a smack in the eye for Juno,’ said Hilary with satisfaction, ‘she was so certain George was about to pop the question.’

Jumping at the sound of tearing, Flora looked down at the ripped-open bodice of her only black dress. She’d need it, if she was going to spend the rest of her life in mourning.

‘Of course Juno was much too young for him,’ observed Miss Parrott. ‘In his position he’d want someone older and more sophisticated, like that nice Serena who works at Megagram.’

As the coach doors clanged open, Flora leapt up, out of the coach, up the steps of the hotel. Reprieve awaited her. As she collected her key, the receptionist handed her a telephone number and a message to ring George. She couldn’t bear to wait for the lift and could have won the One Thousand Guineas, at the speed she belted up five flights. She then misdialled the number three times only to get through to her mother, Georgie, who was also on tour, in America.

‘Darling, how are you?’

‘Fine, absolutely fine.’ Fighting back the tears, Flora slumped on the bed. ‘Did you ring earlier?’

‘About twenty minutes ago. I’m amazed you got the message. I had to repeat the number about four times. I just wanted to know how it’s all going.’

Flora couldn’t inject a flicker of animation into her voice.

‘I’m OK, Mum. You know tours, up and down, we’re all a bit tired.’ She couldn’t face her mother’s torrent of sympathy if she told her about Rodney. ‘But it’s going well.’

‘How are you enjoying Spain?’

‘Haven’t seen much of it really. There’s so much going on within the orchestra. How was the concert?’

‘Oh terrific, packed out.’

But her mother didn’t want to talk about that. Like Abby, she’d rung home several times in the middle of the night in the last week, but only got herself on the answering-machine.

Flora felt a great weariness.

‘Dad’s probably asleep, Mum, or pulled out the telephone. You know what he’s like.’

I can’t face it, she thought in panic, when her mother finally rang off. There must be someone, good, true, safe and constant in the world. I’m a basket case, she thought, as she gazed at her wan, white face in the mirror. I’ve just transferred the agony of being in love with Rannaldini to the even worse pain of being in love with George.

But a man ‘in his position’ was not likely to be interested in a twenty-one-year-old slut.

When the telephone rang again, she pounced on it in hope, but it was only Nellie saying there was one helluva party going on in Abigail’s suite, the Don Juan, and why didn’t Flora come up.

‘I’ve got a migraine,’ said Flora, and hung up.

FIFTY-EIGHT

It was one helluva party. In death we are in life. The RSO had played their hearts out. Knowing that Rodney would have wanted it, they now felt an hysterical need to hell-raise.

Back and forth, back and forth went the waiters with room service. Carmine, orgasmic at the prospect of drink paid for by someone else, kept ordering his own bottles of Krug.

A splendid sub-party was going on inside Abby’s wardrobe. At least three people, including Simon Painshaw, Ninion and Fat Isobel, had been seen going in. Every so often a hand holding an empty glass would shoot out of the wardrobe. Once it was filled, the door would snap shut again.

In different rooms of the Don Juan Suite, different wirelesses were blaring. Every time ‘Rachel’s Lament’ was played, everyone stopped drinking or dancing and cheered. Cherub kept turning the lights out.

Davie, whose sprained ankle was as puffy as a sumo wrestler’s, was using Abby’s telephone. He was desperately trying to clock in with Brünnhilde to explain he’d fallen off the platform when sober, rather than Abby’s balcony when drunk, before any of the orchestra wives at home told her otherwise. But he was so plastered, he kept dialling wrong numbers and was now through to Australia.

‘Whatsh the wevver like out there?’

Cries of admiration greeted the arrival of Viking in a beautiful sky-blue shirt.

‘Enough to make a sailor’s trousers,’ sighed Miss Parrott.

‘I’d settle for a sailor,’ said Candy sourly. ‘We’re not going to get any joy out of this lot tonight.’

‘That’s my shirt,’ hissed Blue, ‘Cathie saved up months to buy it for me.’

‘My need is greater than yours,’ murmured Viking. ‘You’re not even trying to pull Abby.’

To egg on Abby’s suitors, a mural showed Don Juan plucking guitars under moonlit windows, being admonished by large ladies, and chasing peasant girls round double beds. Getting into the spirit, Chloë, the comely alto soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth was trying to pull Julian, kneeling at his feet, pressing her pretty bosom against his locked knees.

‘As my wife, Luisa, is always complaining — ’ apologetically Julian lifted Chloë’s hand from his groin — ‘after a concert, I simply can’t.’

‘No such word as can’t,’ said Miss Parrott, delicately picking bits of onion out of a Spanish omelette. Then dropping her fork with a clatter, she started to cry: ‘Rodney always loved the harp.’

‘Well, he’s gone to the right place,’ said Viking, filling up her glass. ‘By now he’ll be knocking back Holy Spirit and goosing his first angel. Don Quixote was magic, Dimitri, would your Guarneri like a top up?’

In the centre of the living-room, rapidly colouring the green carpet with spilt drink, a raucous game of strip poker was in progress. Abby’s suitors, realizing they had only two more nights to win the two thousand, had decided this would be as good a way as any to get her clothes off. But Abby had turned out to be an ace player, who was still fully clad in her orange vest, suede mini and high-heeled black sandals.

Among the ring of musicians who surrounded her, on the other hand, Dixie was down to Bugs Bunny boxer shorts, Randy to one sock, Barry to his gold medallions, El Squeako to grey long-johns, and El Creepo to a corn plaster. Nellie had somehow retained her cut-out bra and mauve crotchless knickers. Cherub was wearing just Abby’s sunhat and giggling non-stop. A fully dressed Noriko crouched behind trying to cheat for him.

‘Abby’s got a furr house and Dixie a straight frush,’ she whispered.

‘There’s the straight frush,’ cried Cherub, who was far too drunk to make use of any information. ‘Sings his song twice over, without a repeat mark.’

Everyone shouted with laughter and re-filled their glasses.

‘Just like Dejeuner sur l’Herbe,’ mused Henry, putting on his glasses to examine the poker groups on the green carpet.

Candy and Clare, who’d eaten too much paella over the past few days to have any desire to strip off, were absolutely hopping. Randy and Dixie totally ignored them by day, then expected to move into their beds at night. Having drunk a bottle apiece, they had retired to a distant sofa.

‘I’m going for brains in future,’ said Candy. ‘If there’s a body thrown in, that’s a bonus.’

‘I’m going for breeding,’ said Clare. ‘They never ran after Abby until she took up the violin again. Bloody gold diggers.’

‘I fancy Julian, only decent bloke in the orchestra.’

‘Let’s go and rescue him from Alto Sex. Who were you talking to?’ added Clare disapprovingly, as Davie came off the telephone to Texas.

‘Wrong number, she shounded very nicesh. Got two liel girls.’

‘And you told her you were six foot two and twenty-six,’ said Candy in outrage.

‘Thatsh my inside leg, musht get ’old of Brun’ilde.’

Despite continuous whoops, howls and blaring music, Chloë had finally fallen asleep across Julian’s thighs. Gently, like a violin case, he laid her on the floor. On the sofa beside him sat Francis and Bill Thackery, both very drunk.

‘We’ve gotta zap this merger the moment we get home,’ urged Julian. ‘We lost a great ally in Rodney.’

‘I loved the man,’ Bill Thackery’s eyes were very red.

‘Only conductor I’ve ever met who brought the word “you” into his conversation,’ sighed Francis.

‘How’s your wife’s hip, Francis?’ called out Abby, who’d been eavesdropping while shuffling the cards.

Francis flushed. ‘Oh, much the same.’

‘I do hope you’ll get her into the hospital soon.’

‘Sooner than you think if Francis gets his leg over,’ murmured a now naked Dixie, as he lobbed shiny black olives at Nellie’s nipples.

Abby, who still hadn’t shed a garment, dealt again. The men in the orchestra had all been so complimentary about her solo and her handling of the concert. But she was utterly unmoved that most of them were now stripped for action because of a certainty that she and Viking were finally going to make it. Drink had anaesthetized the pain of Rodney’s death. She could only remember the heaven of Viking’s arms around her, even the very reluctant slap had been oddly comforting. In a matter of seconds, she had exchanged one father figure for another.

Even now Viking was detached from the party, leaning against the wall in that heavenly blue shirt, sweating out a weak Scotch, swapping Rodney stories with a stunned, tearful Cyril. But all the time, his eyes never left Abby’s face, a little smile flickering over his beautiful, stubborn mouth. Totally forgetting Marcus, liberated from a disapproving Flora’s chaperonage, Abby felt a pulse as insistent as a snare drum throbbing between her legs. It was going to happen.

A drunken shout greeted another extract from Rachel’s Requiem, this time on the violin.

‘That was a glorious solo, Julian,’ shouted Cherub, then seeing the uncontrollable jealousy on Bill Thackery’s face, added, ‘but your century against the CCO was even better, Bill.’

Always the good sport, Bill joined in the roars of laughter.

Julian was glad he had confided to Bill his worries about Rannaldini and the closing-down of the RSO. Bill would fight their corner with the board.

A hand was sticking out of the wardrobe again so Julian gave it a bottle this time. Tarzan howls greeted the removal of Nellie’s crotchless knickers. Carmine, who’d been discussing an expedition to a bull-fight tomorrow with Quinton, glanced over at Nellie and winked.

‘Must have a tinkle,’ said Nellie ten seconds later, and tottered after Carmine into Abby’s spare bathroom.

A hovering Blue, hearing the lock snap, looked round for Cathie, who was wearily listening to Little Jenny droning on about the Celtic Mafia.

‘They are all pigs, Cathie.’

Everyone was too far gone to begin behaving when Hilary marched in, demanded a Perrier and started photographing the more advanced forms of debauchery, which included Dimitri drinking Famous Grouse whisky out of an ashtray.

‘Didn’t you see the “No Moles” sign on the door,’ shouted Randy.

Ignoring him, Hilary announced she must go and spend a penny. Viking watched her go towards Abby’s spare bathroom, which contained Nellie and Carmine, then surreptitiously turn left into Abby’s bedroom. Equally surreptitiously, Viking stole after her.

He found her trying on a diamond necklace, before regretfully turning to Abby’s briefcase, systematically opening envelopes, reading letters, flicking through Abby’s diary and her address book.

Padding up behind her, Viking closed his hands round her neck.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Hilary shrieked and dropped the briefcase with a clatter.

Under his fingers, Viking watched an ugly red blush rise out of her pie-frill collar.

‘I was looking for a copy of tomorrow’s schedule,’ stammered Hilary, ‘to — er — see what time we’re leaving for Toledo.’

‘Bollocks, as if you didn’t know, since your poxy lover called a special inspection at six-thirty outside the hotel.’

He let his hands fall.

‘You were snooping, darling. Just how much is Rannaldini paying you to shop Abby?’

It was a complete shot in the dark. But Hilary’s jump of horror, like a suddenly buggered maiden aunt, said it all.

‘Get out, you meddling bitch, or I’ll call the police,’ said Viking.

Alone in the room, still shaking with fury, he picked up a periwinkle-blue silk scarf, breathing in Amarige. How trusting Abby was — with most of her orchestra in the next room — leaving the unlocked briefcase, the rubies, sapphires, diamonds, the platinum Amex card all spilling wantonly out of her jewel case. Amidst them, like a golden egg, with its leaves shrivelling, was the orange he’d picked her from the coach.

Viking had never been in any doubt that he would win the two thousand pounds. He had already earmarked the money, and told his Wexford grandmother that he would be sending her to America for her seventieth birthday. She hadn’t seen her elder sons and their families who lived in New York and Philadelphia for twenty years.

Viking knew that Abby adored him. He had not forgotten how she had trembled in his arms outside the pub at Christmas. It had been the same this evening. It would require less effort than picking that orange. She would fall into his hands like a sleek ripe yellow pear.

Flora had told him about the secret engagement to Marcus and her grave doubts about the whole thing. Viking felt it was almost his duty to break it up.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he turned Marcus’s photograph to the wall. ‘You’ve lucked out on this one.’

As he wandered back into the living-room, he was pleased to see the silhouettes of his Second Horn and Cathie Jones become one under the stars on the balcony. It would make up for nicking Blue’s shirt.

Peter Plumpton, totally naked, was now mincing around with an upended bread basket on his head.

‘D’you thenk it’s suitable for Escot?’ he was asking, to howls of drunken laughter.

Abby’s other suitors, having failed to beat her at poker, were getting desperate. El Creepo, who wanted the two thousand for a big screen for his porn videos, was clumsily trying to chat her up.

‘What brassière size d’you take Abby?’

‘Don’t insollt my woman,’ howled Viking, grabbing El Creepo by his food-stained lapels.

‘Don’t, Viking, your tooth,’ screamed Abby, as El Creepo raised a nervous fist.

Diversion was provided by a mighty splash from next door as the brass section threw a fully dressed Dirty Harry into the jacuzzi because they thought he needed a bath.

All the other revellers surged into the bathroom, with El Creepo sidling hastily after them, leaving Viking and Abby gazing at each other.

‘Am I?’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘Your woman?’

‘Sure you are.’

Unnerved by his nearness, Abby reached for her champagne, but Viking caught her wrist and emptied the glass into a vase of chrysanthemums.

‘No more,’ he said softly. ‘It dolls the senses, you don’t need Dottch courage with me.’

Abby was always banging on about the importance of bonding. Next door, it was more a case of James Bonding, as the rest of the party stripped off with squeals of glee to see how many of them could jump into the jacuzzi so the water spilled over, turning the blue shag-pile into a soggy pond.

‘I’ve always longed to go skinny-dipping,’ yelled Ninion.

‘And I’ve always wanted to go fatty-dipping,’ screamed Isobel, erupting from the wardrobe, breasts flying like duffle-bags, landing amid the heaving flesh, dispatching the last of the water.

‘Quite extraordinary, pure Rubens,’ said Old Henry, putting on his spectacles to walk round the jacuzzi.

‘Who killed Cock Rubens?’ shouted Dixie, active at the back of the scrum, to more cackles of laughter.

Davie Buckle sat beside them on the loo with the seat down swigging from a bottle of Dubonnet and telephoning Japan. Everyone jumped as Militant Moll stomped in, dressed for bed in men’s wool striped pyjamas and leather slippers.

‘Anyone seen Ninion?’

‘No,’ chorused the heaving flesh.

Burying his face gratefully in Isobel’s massive breasts, Ninion prayed Moll wouldn’t recognize his skinny flanks.

‘He said he was going to Mass in one of the cathedrals,’ called out Miss Parrott.

‘Plenty of steeples round here,’ giggled Clare.

‘You’re despicable,’ thundered Moll, marching out to rousing cheers. ‘Can’t you see how this degrades women?’

‘Get us some more hooch, Davie, love,’ asked Randy who was busy degrading Candy. ‘Just give room service a bell.’

‘Got to cock in with Brün’ilde,’ mumbled Davie, redialling.

‘Tum, ta, ta, tum, tum, tum, ta, ta, tum, tum,’ yelled the RSO to The Ride of the Valkyries.

‘You get the booze, Lincoln, you’re the youngest,’ Dixie ordered the Fifth Horn, who was sitting on the edge of the jacuzzi, in his Y-fronts, sadly gazing into space.

Opening the wardrobe and finding Simon Painshaw and Peter Plumpton passed out in each other’s arms, Lincoln hastily shut the door, and staggered into Abby’s bedroom where he found Little Jenny in tears on the bed.

‘I thought you loved me.’

‘I do, I do.’ Lincoln collapsed on the bed beside her.

Viking would throttle him, but he couldn’t keep the secret any longer.

‘Two thousand pounds would have paid off my overdraft,’ he admitted finally, ‘paid a deposit on a flat, and bought you an engagement ring, because, oh Jenny, I want to marry you.’

‘Did you say engagement ring?’ yelped Jenny, blowing her nose on Abby’s scarf. ‘Oh please, oh yes please.’

Having kissed her at length, Lincoln staggered to his feet.

‘Let’s go to my room, Cherub won’t be back for hours. I’ll go and find the key.’

Looking for stray bottles of drink in Abby’s bedroom, Candy found Jenny, gargling with Abby’s mouthwash and spraying Amarige on her bush.

‘You’ll never guess why they’ve all been chasing Abby,’ she whispered. ‘Promise you won’t tell anyone?’

Candy promised.

‘Randy wanted some new golf clubs,’ Jenny was still explaining two minutes later.

‘I’ll club him,’ screeched Candy, storming back to the jacuzzi.

‘Found it,’ cried Lincoln, waving his room key.

‘Why are you carrying Cherub’s clothes?’ asked Jenny.

‘It’ll take him longer to get back to our room,’ said Lincoln.

As none of the sorties for more booze had been successful, Francis was dispatched on yet another recce.

‘Lady in buff, Lady in buff,’ said the RSO, swaying to the tune of ‘Lady in Red’.

Going into the sitting-room to round up any spare drink, Francis discovered Abby and Viking kissing the life out of each other. They looked so beautiful. Viking was stroking Abby’s cheek as though he was rubbing the earth away from some long-buried Grecian urn. The blaze of triumph on his face made Francis reach for his dark glasses.

Oh fuck, groaned Francis. Bang went poor darling Janey’s hip operation. Never had he found it harder to be a good loser.

When he returned, the revellers fell on his armful of bottles.

‘Viking’s won the two grand,’ he murmured sadly to Old Henry.

For a second, Isobel stopped French kissing Ninion.

‘Viking’s always been too grand,’ she said dismissively.

‘It was Catch 25 situation,’ sighed Dimitri, emptying a whole bottle of Amarige into the steadily overflowing jacuzzi. ‘I vanted to take you to Petersburg, but I love you too much to vin sweepstake.’

‘You can take me to Paradise instead,’ cried Miss Parrott. ‘Oh my wonderful, wonderful Whayte Russian.’

FIFTY-NINE

Viking was not happy about the contrast between Abby’s seven-room suite, and the cupboard he was sharing with Blue which was stuffy, airless, shaken with stamping music from the Flamenco night-club opposite and already littered with his discarded possessions.

He felt as though he was shoving a beautiful bird of paradise into a bantam coop. But he had no time to fret. The pack, in their last-ditch scramble for their prize money, would be soon on his trail.

‘You have the choice of two ironing boards,’ he said, unbuttoning his heavenly blue shirt.

Abby shoved the beds together.

‘We can make love across them.’

‘A woman of experience.’

‘Only of hotel bedrooms. I toured for four years. They provided French champagne and baskets of fruit but nothing as appealing as-’ the words died on her lips. The fastest undresser in the world, Viking kicked off his shorts with one foot and caught them on his upright cock.

‘That’s awful neat,’ said Abby in admiration.

‘It was a trick of Rodney’s.’

Oh shit, what a time to remind her.

Abby collapsed on the bed, her face crumpling.

‘Perhaps we shouldn’t with Rodney just-’

She gazed up, her eyes huge, enflamed, anguished.

‘Rodney’s ondyng wish,’ Viking crossed his fingers behind his back, ‘was for us to end op together. I expect the old dote’s already installed a two-way mirror in the floor of heaven so he can watch us.’

‘He wanted us to be together? Are you sure?’

‘Quite.’ Ducking Jove’s thunderbolts, Viking peeled off Abby’s orange vest. ‘Jesus, you’re lovely, darling.’ Tipping back the yellow bedside lamp, he lifted one warm gold breast wonderingly, then let it drop.

But, as he unzipped her suede skirt, Abby hung her head, uncharacteristically shy and terrified, the giraffe finally cornered by poachers.

‘You need a tranquillizing dart, my darling,’ Viking stroked her quivering shoulders, talking to her softly. ‘You have no idea how stonning you look, or how beautiful it’s going to be.’

Thank Christ he’d beaten the others to it, the thought of them groping and fumbling her was unbearable. He reckoned that Abby was far too tall often to have been carried by a man, and probably never in a bedroom. So, to make her feel precious and fragile, Viking gathered her up, telling her her mouth was like a dark red rose, before he buried his lips in it, kissing her so passionately and for so long, that it was Abby who pulled away gasping for breath.

Then, with the ecstasy of an art dealer unrolling a previously undiscovered Modigliani, he laid her across the two beds, sliding his hands in wonder over the sleek satiny scented contours.

‘Oh, my beauty.’

‘Am I OK?’ Fazed by the intensity of his gaze, Abby’s hands fluttered to shield her breasts and her pubic hair.

‘Oh my American, my newfound land,’ murmured Viking.

Normally, he would have progressed with infinite slowness, talking her through it, making her so relaxed she glided into her first orgasm almost without realizing it, but he had no time. He could feel her long eyelashes fluttering against his cheek, and then her gasp, as his finger tested her slipperiness.

‘Oh, please say you love me.’

‘I’ve never lossted after anyone so much,’ said Viking diplomatically, as he guided his cock deep inside her, letting it rest for a moment.

‘Isn’t that great?’ he whispered. ‘Lie still, my darling, josst feel what’s happening inside you, now go for it, my angel.’

Viking had had many women, but none had ever wanted him so much, nor made love with such utter conviction and desire to please. With most girls, you made them come, then they made you come. Abby, with a conductor’s ability to do many things at once, could give and take at the same time.

‘L’Appassionata,’ Viking glanced down at her reddening cheeks, her eyes cloudy and drugged with desire, ‘who would have thought it, but who wouldn’t, having heard you play.’

Abby didn’t even miss a beat when she noticed the ‘I Love Juno’ tattoo.

‘Lasers’ll zap that.’

‘If you carry on sucking me,’ groaned Viking in ecstasy, ‘it’ll soon be covered in correcting fluid anyway. No, no, don’t bite my dick, I won’t take the piss any more.’

Arching himself out of her like a great golden cat, he slid downwards until his mouth was level with hers.

‘The first time I come,’ he listened to her breathing getting faster and faster, ‘it’s going to be inside you.’

Afterwards Abby buried her face in the smooth ivory curve of his sweating shoulder.

‘Definitely Guinness Book of Records,’ she mumbled.

‘Good, tell all your friends about it.’

‘You’re a rat.’

‘You’re a revelation. How come you’ve got lava in your veins?’

‘Not lava, love. I lova you.’

Down below in the night-club, a lone guitar was playing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.

Reaching for the bottle of Evian by the bed, Abby hazily noticed how right Viking’s blue shirt looked entangled with her suede skirt. On the side-table, his casket and St Christopher lay in a glittering heap with her gold bracelet and Marcus’s ruby ring.

‘Omigod,’ she sat bolt upright, ‘what about Marcus?’

‘He’s a darling boy,’ Viking kissed the soft flesh above Abby’s hip-bones, then working up her ribs, reached her breast. ‘But he’s too young and too onforceful. You need a man.’

‘I figure I’ve just had one.’ Then, as Viking slowly licked her nipple, she pushed his thick yellow hair out of his eyes and said, ‘I love you, Viking.’

When he didn’t answer straightaway, she asked hastily, ‘How come, when you’ve pulled everyone else in the RSO-?’

‘I have not,’ interrupted Viking with some hauteur. ‘I have not pulled Cathie Jones, nor Miss Parrott, nor Isobel, nor Moll, thank the Lord, nor Hilary, nor Mary-the-mother-of-Josstin.’

‘-that you never tried it with me?’

‘Did you mind?’

‘Sure I did, it was like being frantic for a taxi and one with its “For Hire” sign blazing driving round and round and round me, refusing to stop.’

Viking laughed.

‘Didn’t you want to?’ asked Abby indignantly.

‘Indeed I did,’ then, half-joking, ‘I’m shit-scared of being emasculated by powerful women.’

‘But you’re the most powerful person in the orchestra.’

‘Josst a minute, listen.’ Gently Viking tugged at her earlobe. ‘It was also respect and not wanting to rossh things, as my Granny Wexford’s always saying. There’s a time for loving.’

Longing for Viking to introduce her to his family, Abby said she’d just adore to meet Granny Wexford. Had she ever visited the States?

‘Not yet.’ Like Francis earlier, Viking had the grace to blush.

To distract Abby, he slid his thumb in and out of her, the knuckle gently grazing her clitoris, his long fingers caressing the tender underside of her bottom.

‘Oh wow,’ Abby drew in her breath. ‘Oh please, can we make love again?’

‘Don’t be greedy. As Bruno Walter said, “In every truly great work there is only one climax.”’

‘Can’t you ever be serious?’

Not when I’m this jolted, thought Viking.

There was a long pause.

‘Was I better than Juno?’ asked Abby in a small voice.

‘Onotterably. She used to slide table mats onder my elbows in case I burnt the sheets.’

As Abby burst out laughing, Viking reached under his bed.

‘Here’s a present for you.’ He handed her his latest CD of the Brahms Horn Trio.

‘Oh wow,’ said Abby in excitement. ‘Will you sign it for me, please write something lovely.’

As she ran a hand down his cheek, she could have grated Parmesan on the hard, emerging stubble.

‘I can’t help it, I just love you.’

He was about to kiss her, when there was a terrific hammering on the door.

‘Go away,’ shouted Abby.

‘Shot op,’ hissed Viking, putting fingers reeking of sex and Amarige over her mouth. ‘Don’t answer it.’

The hammering increased.

‘Must be Blue trying to get in — it is his room,’ protested Abby.

‘Who is it?’ she shouted.

‘Room shervish,’ said a voice.

‘We didn’t order anything, leave it,’ snarled Viking, tense as a roused Dobermann.

‘I could do with some more Dottch courage,’ teased Abby, ‘since you watered those flowers with my last lot.’ And wriggling out of his grasp, she wrapped herself in the blue shirt and fumbled with the door handle.

‘Don’t, for Chrissake,’ begged Viking, but it was too late.

At first she thought it was the Press, as the flashes of a dozen cameras blinded her. Then, in horror, she took in the muscular hairy legs below the straining black skirt of the waitress who was carrying the sliding magnum of Moët aloft. Behind her, leering and cheering in varying degrees of drunkenness, were most of the male members of her orchestra.

‘Who’s a clever Viking, then?’ shouted Randy.

‘Hooray for the lucky winner,’ cried Peter Plumpton, who was still wearing his upended bread basket.

‘Too much molestar-hic, too much molesta ar,’ cried a dripping Dirty Harry.

‘I’ve won more than you, Viking.’ An exuberant Dixie smugly patted his strawberry-blond wig. ‘I had a grand on you at three to one.’

‘Fock off the lot of you,’ howled Viking, yanking Abby back inside, ‘and leave os alone.’

A moment later, the crowd dispersed as a yelling regiment of policemen and soldiers, brandishing guns, stormed the landing.

Another moment later, there was a crack like a pistol shot as Abby drove her high heel through Brahms’s Horn Trio.

Davie Buckle, having passed out behind the jacuzzi, had missed the arrival of the forces of law and order, but waking, had dragged a pair of underpants on over his trousers, and was now progressing noisily along the third floor.

Julian caught up with him outside Number 387.

‘Hallo there,’ he was saying to an enraged Spanish bureaucrat in a hairnet.

‘Come on, Davie.’ As Julian took his arm, Davie started walking away from him in little circles. ‘You’ve got to stop disturbing people.’

‘Got to find Abby.’

‘Not at four o’clock in the morning.’

Julian decided his own room was the nearest.

Once he’d thrown Davie on the bed, however, Davie started to fight.

‘Got to find Abby.’

‘I shall telephone Brünnhilde,’ said Julian sternly.

Davie looked owlish. He was terrified of Brünnhilde.

‘She’s in Rutminshter,’ he said sulkily, then brightening, added, ‘then I’ll telephone Luisa.’

‘Luisa doesn’t mind, she trusts me,’ said Julian, dropping five Redoxins into a tooth mug, and handing them to Davie.

‘You’ve got Beethoven Nine again tomorrow, no it’s tonight now, drink it.’

‘This isn’t Scotch,’ Davie looked into the tooth mug in outrage. ‘Someone’s pissed in this glass.’

Limping towards the window, he was about to chuck it into the street.

‘Drink it,’ ordered Julian.

A shattered George fell into bed at four o’clock in the morning after trying to unravel the endless red tape of flying Rodney’s body back to Lucerne. Having switched off his mobile, he was roused a few minutes later by his wife.

‘It’s Nicholas someone, he sounds put out,’ she added, as George took the house telephone from her.

Knickers was apoplectic. The orchestra were completely out of control, orgying and rioting in Abby’s jacuzzi which had overflowed and flooded the bridal suite below, where the President of some African state was having an illicit unbridal bonk. His bodyguards had gone beserk and called the troops out. Twenty members of the orchestra had been arrested and were now cooling their heels in Barcelona gaol.

‘Which members of the orchestra?’ asked George icily.

‘Dixie, Randy, Blue, Nellie, Ninion, Dimitri, Candy and Clare. Cherub escaped I think, Flora, I can’t remember exactly.’

The arrested players had never seen anything equal to the rage George had worked up by the time he’d driven the forty miles to Barcelona gaol.

He found most of his orchestra still plastered. Dimitri was crying because he couldn’t remember where he’d left his cello; Miss Parrott was hiccupping with her rhubarb-pink beehive askew and singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’; Dixie, still in his black-and-white maid’s outfit, was being leered at by the guard; and Ninion, still necking ferociously, looked as though he was going to be sucked inside Fat Isobel like a minnow at any second.

Only by handing over hoards and hoards and hoards of greenbacks did George manage to spring them. The one saving grace was that none of them had got round — yet — to taking drugs.

‘Where’s Flora?’ snarled George, as the motley bunch swayed in front of him.

‘Oh, Flora wasn’t with us,’ said Nellie, who was wearing a Spanish policeman’s hat, ‘the poor thing had a migraine. She was crying with pain when I popped in around midnight.’

Only Blue, who had his hand in Cathie’s and was soberer than most, noticed that George suddenly cheered up, and the great thundercloud threatening to drench them all suddenly rolled away.

‘You better go back to the hotel and pack,’ he told them unsympathetically. ‘And get your baggage outside your doors. The coach leaves in an hour.’

Ignoring two wake-up calls, Barry the Bass was finally roused by a call from the leader of the orchestra who’d spent the rest of the night in an armchair.

‘It’s about Davie,’ said Julian apologetically.

‘Where did he end up?’

‘My room, eventually. He’s snoring so loudly, Brünnhilde will hear him in Rutminster, and I can’t wake him. He’s going to miss this goddamn roll-call.’

‘Give me five minutes.’

Barry the Bass, who was highly experienced in these matters, from his days in a rock band, kicked Davie in the ribs.

‘Get up, you drunken bastard.’

Davie groaned, but didn’t stir.

Deodorant sprayed into his face had no effect.

It was only when Barry seized the foot with the sprained ankle and twisted it round and round that Davie finally woke up.

The three made it outside just in time.

In the absence of Miles, Knickers begged George to inspect the troops. ‘And please, please chew them out. I simply can’t control them any more.’

Dawn was making flamingo-pink in-roads on the East as George walked slowly down the row. The Spaniards, he decided, could not have seen so many wrecks since the Armada. Flora looked frightful, her face chalk-white, her eyes through crying as red as a white rat’s. Slumped against the coach, slitty eyes gazing into space, Viking looked even whiter than she did. Of the whole lot, only the Steel Elf, who didn’t drink, looked beautiful, the violet shadows under her eyes increasing her look of fragility.

‘Where’s Cherub?’ intoned Knickers, checking his list.

‘It’s not his fort,’ piped up Noriko. ‘Poor Cherub’s lost all his crows.’

On cue, Cherub shot through the swing doors, holding a tambourine over his cock and totally naked except for his shoes.

Scuttling down the steps, he slid into the line-up just as George reached him. The players, despite hangovers, were in total hysterics — waiting for a blistering undressing down. But George’s eyes merely ran over Cherub for a second.

‘Shoes need cleaning, Wilson,’ he said coldly and moved on.

The next moment, Noriko had hurtled down therow and wrapped Cherub in her long pink cardigan.

George returned to the middle of the row, climbing back up three of the hotel steps so he could talk to his orchestra. In his haste to reach the gaol, he had put his dark blue poloshirt on inside out — lucky for him, thought Flora wistfully.

‘You’re all an absolute disgrace,’ he roared, then, like the turned-up corner of a page, a faint smile lifted his square face. ‘We’ll be in Toledo by ten o’clock. Beethoven Nine is appropriately scheduled to start at nine. As you can play it in your sleep, I suggest a short rehearsal at eight after your meal-break, but only on condition that you spend the afternoon in bed, alone and you play out of your boots this evening.’

And he strode off towards the car-park.

‘He’s in a jovial mood,’ said Miss Parrott in surprise.

Out of masochistic yearning, Flora stationed herself in front of Hilary and the Steel Elf, but they both slept all the way to Toledo. A rowdy party carried on at the back of the coach, but they couldn’t persuade Flora to join them.

‘Milesie loves me, yes I know, Cos my pay cheque tells me so,’ sang Cherub to the tune of ‘Jesus Loves Me’.

Viking sat by himself. The sky clouded over as they drove into Toledo. Viking could see a red traffic-light reflected in the bus window like a setting sun. If only he could have turned back the clock twelve hours. He was in the kind of eruptive, jungle-cat mood where everyone avoided him.

But, as they surged into the hotel reception which was appropriately filled with glossy dark jungle plants, to collect their new keys from Knickers, Randy shouted ‘Lunch on Viking, everyone.’

‘I’m crashing out,’ Viking shot a warning glance in Flora’s direction.

‘Dom Perignon all round,’ went on Randy evilly.

A mocking Dixie put his arm round Flora’s shoulders.

‘You missed all the fun last night.’

‘Shot your face,’ howled Viking.

‘What are you talking about?’

Flora didn’t believe Dixie at first. Then he waved a polaroid under her nose, and she flipped. All her pent-up misery over George going back to his wife and the thieving bloody randiness and fecklessness of men in general, poured out of her, as she screamed at all of them.

‘How could you do that to Abby, you bastards, BASTARDS. You swore you’d break her, and now you bloody well have.’

Locking herself in her room she threw herself down on the bed, sobbing her heart out, ignoring the bombardment on the door until they all got bored and wandered off. Then the telephone went. It was Viking.

‘It wasn’t like you think,’ he begged. ‘Please put in a good word to Abby.’

‘Oh, fuck off. I am just writing a stinking letter to St Patrick, telling him there was one utterly poisonous snake he didn’t drive out of Ireland. Haven’t you any idea either how this will hurt Marcus?’

The moment she slammed the telephone down, it rang again.

‘Fuck off, fuck off,’ shrieked Flora.

‘Is thut Room 854?’

‘How do I know?’

‘It’s George.’

‘Whadja want?’ She mustn’t start crying again.

‘You once said you wanted to go oop in an air balloon.’

‘I’ve got a headache.’

‘Fresh air’ll do you good — a car’ll pick you up at two o’clock.’

SIXTY

Remembering the coiffured, manicured Ruth, Flora decided two could play at that game. Systematically, she worked her way through the little bottles in her bathroom, washing her hair, then lying in a bubble bath, in a shower cap as transparent as her motives, as she scrubbed her body with a tiny oblong of soap. Then she rubbed in all the available moisturizer and gargled away all the pink mouthwash. She would have scrubbed her entrails if she could have got at them. She put on a dove-grey sundress, thrown out by her mother as being too young, and left her hair loose so it shone and swung like a copper bell. With a desperately trembling hand, she just managed to draw two thick lines round her eyes until they dominated her face like a bush baby’s, and painted her lips the glowing coral of japonica in spring. The gentle dove-grey was wonderfully becoming. Jumping with nerves, she went downstairs to find various members of the orchestra passed out on chairs and sofas in the foyer. The bar was propping up a green-faced Davie. Others were setting out on jaunts with guide books.

‘I’ve got to see something of Spain other than concert halls and ceilings,’ announced Nellie.

In a nearby booth, Randy’s big checked shoulders were hunched over the telephone as he called home for the first time in six days. The next moment he was crying so much he could hardly tell his wife he’d see her tomorrow.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked Flora.

‘Kirsty put each of the children on to speak to me,’ sobbed Randy, ‘I miss them all so much.’

‘Then why play around so much, when you’ve got such a lovely family?’

‘I don’t know,’ Randy blew his nose, then caught sight of Flora. ‘God, you look sexy, come ’ere.’

But Flora had bounded away. Calm down, she kept telling herself, it’s daft to get so excited.

‘You car’s here, Mees Seymour,’ announced a hot-eyed chauffeur sweating in black uniform.

‘How d’you know it’s me?’ squeaked Flora.

‘I was told you was gorgeous with red ‘air.’

‘Oh goodness.’ Flora bolted down the steps.

But all her happiness drained away as inside the car she found Juno looking so bloody beautiful in a pale pink shirt and shorts, showing off tiny suntanned thighs half the width of Flora’s. It was no comfort that Juno was as cross to see her, or that they were soon joined by Simon (perhaps George was after him, too) and Hilary. Flora slumped in the back; she might as well have got drunk on Viking’s ill-gotten champagne with all those other bastards.

They drove past ploughed fields and rocks the colour of lobster bisque through beautiful white villages, up an avenue of yellowing, peeling plane trees to a ravishing castle about five miles out of town.

A crowd of people in light trousers and rather well-pressed shirts, dressed up with nattily tied silk scarves, were making a din on the terrace. On the unblemished and blatantly sprinkled lawn below, a panting Spaniard in blue dungarees was wrestling with a purple-and-emerald-green dragon’s skin spewing out of a vast basket.

‘What a lovely spot,’ said the Steel Elf.

George came straight up. The rings under his eyes were heavier than his eyebrows. He had turned his navy-blue polo shirt the right way round, but tucked into his white trousers, it showed he had completely lost his spare tyre. His feet looked vulnerably pale in loafers. Flora suppressed an insane urge to drop to her feet and kiss them. She must get a grip on herself.

‘What does anyone want to drink?’

‘Perrier, please,’ said Juno.

‘And me, too,’ simpered Hilary.

‘I’ll have an orange pressé if it’s feasible,’ said Simon.

‘I’ll have a quadruple vodka and tonic,’ said Flora.

‘You won’t be able to play,’ reproved Hilary.

‘I’ve got to sing,’ said Flora. ‘It’s so hard, I’ll never get onto the platform if I’m sober.’

Having taken Flora at her word, and persuaded the others to accept a glass of champagne each, George introduced Ruth, who was much too done-up, in a frilly white shirt and shocking-pink trousers with gold high heels, for lunch-time in the campa.

Having given Flora a not-altogether friendly look she introduced her ‘partner’ Trevor.

Flora giggled. ‘I’ve got a partner called Trevor, too,’ she said. ‘Only in my Trevor’s case, he has black eyes, and a tight skin and a very curly tail, and a squeaky bark, and I rescued him.’ She rattled on. ‘You don’t look as though you need rescuing.’

Trevor II smirked, gave Flora slightly too hot a glance for Ruth’s liking, and asked her if she’d ever been up in an air balloon before.

Flora shook her head. Suddenly she was too shy to say anything in George’s presence.

‘We’re coming along to the concert this evening to look at George’s latest toy,’ said Ruth with a slight edge. ‘I love Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. To think the wonderful old man wrote the whole thing when he was deaf.’

She beckoned the maid to bring over the bottle.

‘Have some more shampoo.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ giggled Juno, ‘it makes my nose tickle.’ She smiled roguishly at George, who had also fallen oddly silent.

‘Just a half,’ said Hilary. ‘I expect we’ll be in the balloon soon.’

‘Oh no, Pedro-Maria takes at least half an hour to get it up,’ said Ruth.

‘Poor Mrs Pedro-Maria,’ murmured Flora. Just for a second her eyes met George’s and, to stop herself laughing, she sloped off and gazed at a hideous bed of red gladioli and purple asters. Ruth was hell. George was the one who needed rescuing.

Only George and the four musicians from the RSO, and Pedro-Maria to steer the thing, went up in the balloon. Extraordinary, reflected Flora, as they took off into the blue, that a slain dragon could swell up into something so huge and beautiful with the orange flame belching up into the purple-and-emerald-green dome. Turning, she saw George’s waving wife getting smaller and smaller.

It was literally heavenly. This is how God must feel, thought Flora, as she gazed down on the turning, tawny woods and the gold and green fields, as the darkness of the balloon’s shadow fell over the face of the earth. Below them flocks of sheep and herds of cows scattered in temporary terror.

Flora had deliberately positioned herself at the front of the basket as far away from George as possible, giving him the chance if he wanted to stand behind the Steel Elf. Everyone was oohing and aahing as they floated over a little village, driving dogs to hysterical barking and bringing children screaming with excitement into the streets.

Then a sudden gust tipped the basket forward and she felt a body, solid as a Rottweiler, thrown against hers, and knew instantly with a thumping heart that it was George’s.

‘Sorry,’ she gasped, ramming herself even harder against the front of the basket, putting half an inch between them, but a second later, the wind tossed the basket backwards, throwing her against him. As she leapt away, his big hands closed on her hip bones, steadying her, and he was right behind her giving her absolutely no room for manoeuvre. With St George and the dragon pitted against one poor damsel — what chance of escape did she have?

I must be dreaming, thought Flora in bewilderment, but she could have sworn George dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder and now his thumbs were softly stroking her ribcage, as the flames surged upwards with another dragon roar.

For a second, he took his right hand away, resting a muscular arm on her shoulder, the soft dark down tickling her cheek, as he pointed out hares racing up and down the rows of stubble.

‘What a wonderful view,’ gushed Hilary.

‘Mine’s much better,’ murmured George into Flora’s hair.

His right hand was back but higher up her ribs this time, and oh my God, his thumb was slowly caressing her right breast outside her dress, and now, oh heavens, it had crept inside — there was no mistaking it. Her nipples were pushing out the dove-grey sundress as proof, and it was the most blissfully erotic thing that had ever happened to her. It knocked any of Rannaldini’s caresses into a cocked cock. She was so faint with desire her insides were churning and disintegrating like peaches in a liquidizer.

She couldn’t bear it, gradually they were losing height, drifting down over a sage-green poplar copse. The lovely balloon of her happiness was going to subside.

‘That’s very good timing, George,’ said Simon.

In despair, Flora noticed two chauffeurs leaning against two hearse-like limos waiting at the edge of the big yellow field below them. She glanced sideways and realized that Hilary was gazing at George’s still-wandering right hand in absolute horror. Then another greater gust of wind caught the balloon. The next moment Hilary and Juno were screaming as they crashed and bumped to the ground like cats in a basket chucked out of a car, with everyone falling higgledy-piggledy on top of each other.

‘Get me out of here,’ shrieked Hilary, outraged to find herself trapped beneath an excited Pedro-Maria, who was in turn beneath an even more excited Simon.

‘You OK, Flora, luv?’ George’s accent was even broader with anxiety.

‘Gone to heaven,’ sighed Flora, squirming blissfully under the weight of his body.

A second later George had pulled her to her feet, lifted her out of the basket and dragged her across the stubble into the first limo.

Jumping into the driving seat, he screeched off in a cloud of dust, leaving behind the two drivers and the rest of the party waving and shouting impotently.

‘Plenty of room for the rest of them,’ he said, nearly removing a gatepost as he swung into the road. ‘Do oop your seat belt,’ then, after a long pause, ‘I luv you, I luv you, I bluddy luv you to distraction.’

‘What?’ squeaked Flora, ‘I thought you still loved Ruth.’

‘I came here last night to ask her for a divorce.’

‘I thought it was you who refused to give her one.’

‘You know a lot about my life, don’t you?’ said George, murdering unfamiliar gears as he swung onto the main road, and rammed his foot on the accelerator.

‘I hated Trevor,’ he said. ‘He was one of my competitors and he took my wife off me. Now I know he’s done me a good deed. I didn’t hate him any more today. Anyway, I want to be free to marry someone else.’

Flora was speechless, and reached for the strap above her window as the needle hit 100 m.p.h.

‘But I don’t understand, I mean — ’ then, as the car only just missed a bank — ‘Jesus!’

‘Yes, you better shoot up, and let me concentrate on driving.’

Reaching Ruth’s hacienda, he grabbed Flora’s hand again and, ignoring the party that was still roaring on the terrace, dragged her up three flights of stairs into his bedroom, and locking the door took her in his arms. For a second he gazed into her face, so sweet and apprehensive and striped by the sunlight streaming through the shutters, and then he kissed her.

Flora had never experienced such tenderness, nor passionate enthusiasm nor clumsiness all at once. Then he ripped off her sundress, and kissed her breasts, before tearing off her knickers and throwing her on the bed.

‘I’m not on the p-p-pill,’ Flora hated herself for stammering.

‘Doesn’t matter. I want to fook you more than anything in the world,’ George stammered even more as he fumbled with his belt, ‘but I want you to know I luv you and want to marry you as well.’

Flora helped him with his zip and boxer shorts.

‘Oh my,’ she said in a choked voice, ‘you are well Hungerford.’

‘Don’t take the piss,’ pleaded George. ‘I can’t ’andle it. Let’s take things very slowly.’

‘’Andel’s Largo,’ began Flora, until George stopped her nervous prattle by kissing her.

Having exhausted the bed, they moved into the bathroom. Lying on the shag-pile, Flora admired the gleaming undersides of the lavatory bowl, and thought she must remember to clean under the loo at the cottage. Then she thought of nothing else except George.

Finally ending up on a pile of duvets on the bedroom floor, she staggered to her feet.

‘I have to sing “Ode to Joy”, in a few hours,’ she sighed, ‘but I’m so happy it’ll probably sing itself this evening.’

‘I luv you,’ repeated George, who was running water into a round cyclamen-pink bath next door. ‘I mean it about marrying you.’

‘And I mean it, too,’ said Flora, bending over to kiss him, ‘it’sjust a bit new and all. The bliss of having a bathroom en suite,’ she went on, ‘is that you don’t have to scuttle across the landing trapping a towel between your legs.’

A shadow flickered across George’s face.

‘Have you done that lots of times?’

‘A few.’

‘How many blokes have you been to bed with?’

‘I’ve lost Count,’ said Flora, ‘as Countess Dracula was always complaining. D’you want a bowdlerized version?’

‘No, I want the truth.’

‘Right, well,’ Flora took a deep breath. ‘I had several schoolboys at Bagley Hall, then I had Rannaldini. I wonder if women who’ve slept with Rannaldini make love in a certain way, like string players who’ve been to the Juillard.’

‘Go on,’ George almost snapped, as Flora’s body disappeared under the surface then emerged like a seal, the bubbles coating her freckled back.

‘Rannaldini obliterated everyone else. Then I tried a few students at the Academy to exorcize him, but it didn’t work. Then no-one till Jack, but I only went to bed with him because he rescued me from Carmine — rather like accepting a large brandy from a St Bernard when you’re stuck halfway up the Matterhorn.’

Unable to suppress a smile, George started to rub Pears soap, the colour of Flora’s wet hair, down her arm.

‘That’s all, except Viking,’ she said.

Dropping the soap, George’s hand did a Chinese burn on her wrist. He really minds, thought Flora, gazing at the red mark in wonder.

‘W-w-was it foontastic?’ asked George wistfully.

‘Yes and no, we were both a bit too expert like Torvill and Dean. Anyway, I honestly think Viking went to bed with me to get at Abby. He can’t leave her alone, he’s always bitching at her.

‘That’s about it. Truly. I’m at my journey’s end.’ Putting both arms up, feeling George as warm, wide and solid as an Aga against her, Flora pulled him into the bath with a huge splash. ‘You are the loveliest hunk.’

But George was still fretting.

‘Will I be exciting enough for you?’

‘Exciting,’ Flora’s eyes flooded with tears. ‘I can’t begin to tell you, like that great balloon soaring into the sky out of that limp rubber, what it’s like suddenly to be happy again, wildly, ecstatically happy with the most adorable man in the world. That’s exciting, I have to joke, I have to, I’m just so terrified it’s going to end.’

‘In my end is my beginning,’ said George, kissing her soapy hand. ‘I’m going to marry you the second my divorce is through.’

‘Oh goodness.’

‘And I want to say, Floora — ’ (she loved the way he pronounced it with a long first syllable) — ‘I’ve had a change of heart because of you. I know I’ve been greedy in the past, I’ve ridden roof-shod over folk, been a bastard. Knocking down houses, in-filling, leaning on old ladies, I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve totally given oop the idea of buying H.P. Hall and turning it into a supermarket.’

‘I know someone who could do with a bit of in-filling at the moment,’ said Flora slyly.

Rising up in the bath, she started to kiss her way down his body, plunging into the water until his cock came up to meet her. Then she looked up, quickly gasping for breath, eyelashes like star fish.

‘Abby’s always telling me to play with every inch of my beau.’

George ruffled her hair.

‘You’re utterly deranged.’

‘Let’s have a deranged marriage then.’

‘When can I start telling everyone?’

‘Not until I tell Abby,’ said Flora. ‘I’m not sure how pleased she’ll be.’

SIXTY-ONE

Abby was in a murderous mood and shouted at Flora as she slid in late to the rehearsal and took her place beside the other three soloists.

‘She’s in a terrific paddy,’ whispered Clare in awe.

‘Correction,’ whispered Candy, ‘a terrific Paddy’s been inside her.’

Poor Abby, in fact, had just had a hideous session with Hilary. Oozing spurious concern like a lanced boil, Hilary had come into the conductor’s room, and begged Abby not to take Viking’s seduction too seriously.

‘The sweepstake was just a bit of fun, Abby. And you must remember the musicians aren’t wealthy like you. That two thousand would have got most of them out of debt, saved the repossession of Barry’s barn, paid for Janey’s hip, cushioned Cyril’s retirement, bought Randy some new clubs.’

‘And a new prayer-mat for Miles.’

‘Oh, Miles would never involve himself with anything so tacky.’

‘Unlike fucking Viking.’

Hilary sighed deeply.

‘I’m afraid Viking’s too lazy to get anywhere in life. He’d never have scraped together enough money to send Granny Wexford to America, if he hadn’t won it. They’ll think he’s such a hero in Dublin, and of course he has to keep up his reputation as the orchestra stud.’

‘The son-of-a-bitch,’ hissed Abby, ‘I’ll get him for sexual harassment.’

‘I’m afraid the orchestra will say the boot was on the other foot — they’ll swear black’s white for Viking.’

‘I’ve been made a complete fool of, right?’

‘Where’s your sense of humour, Abby?’ Hilary was loving this. ‘Get things in proportion. If you need some counselling when you get back to England, Miles will arrange it.’

‘Can he arrange for Viking to be Bobbitted as well?’

Hilary sighed. ‘Miles and I are praying for you.’

Certainly during the rehearsal Abby’s wrath was reserved for Viking.

They were only running through the last movement from where the chorus and soloists come in, but she wasted everyone’s time singling out any intervening horn passages, and pulling them to pieces, particularly Viking’s contribution.

‘More pianissimo, First Horn,’ she screamed until Viking wasn’t making any sound at all. ‘Play it again.’

‘Why? It was perfect.’

‘Don’t smart-ass me, leave your brains in your trousers where they belong.’

The minute she said that, Abby could have kicked herself.

‘You should know,’ chorused the Celtic Mafia.

‘I said, on your own, First Horn.’

And Viking, who’d never been called First Horn in his life except by Rannaldini, retaliated by playing the solo from Ein Heldenleben which had so bewitched her on her first day at the RSO. Abby promptly burst into tears and stormed out.

Julian ran after her, but she wouldn’t talk to him. After last night she didn’t know who to trust, not even Flora, who’d been grinning like a jackass throughout the rehearsal.

Somehow, by the evening, fortified by a couple of beta-blockers, Abby had pulled herself together, and the applause, as always, even for a run-of-the-mill Beethoven’s Ninth, was tumultuous because it was such a happy piece, and because so many of the chorus’s relations were swelling the audience.

George sat in a box high above the orchestra. It was hard to tell who looked more frozen with misery, Viking or Cyril, for whom it was his last concert abroad, and who had been denied the great horn solo in the third movement.

But George couldn’t be bothered with other people’s problems tonight. And the moment Flora filed on with the other soloists, he never took his eyes off her, rejoicing in every note, as her piercing exquisite voice soared above everyone else’s, even when she joined in the chorus. Several times she smiled up at him and even made Foxie give him a wave. She has brought radiance to my life, thought George. Thank you, God, for giving me a second chance.

Having given her all to the ecstatic Toledo audience, Abby was on her knees. There had been too much going on to take in Rodney’s death. Now the shock was wearing off, and the pain beginning to hurt. Only to Rodney could she have confessed the agony and utter humiliation of having offered herself to Viking so totally and so trustingly, when all he was after was the macho gratification of winning some bet. She could imagine the guffaws, the sniggering, the slaps on the back.

‘What was the snooty cow like, Viking? What was she really like?’

And it had been so beautiful, so perfect, that was the pity of it.

She wanted to creep into bed and die, but George had to fly back for tomorrow’s RSO board meeting, so she had to take his place at dinner with the Toledo organizers.

Viking, probably for the first time in his career, didn’t go out on an end-of-tour razzle. He was utterly bewildered how depressed and ashamed of himself he felt. Abby had got under his skin and irritated him more than any woman he’d ever met. He had dreamt for so long of wiping the haughty expression off her face and reducing her to grovelling, pleading, adoring submission, and now he had, he loathed himself.

As leader of the pack, his street cred would have been utterly destroyed if he hadn’t won the bet. He also owed it to his backers. As the favourite, there had been a lot of money on him. Now he desperately wanted to explain to Abby that winning the bet had only been part of the incentive, and the actuality had been miraculous. He was certain if he and Abby had spent a week or so together unwatched by the lascivious or disapproving eyes of the orchestra, he could have fucked her out of his system and remained friends. Guilt was not a familiar emotion to Viking, and he didn’t think this time he’d be able to rid himself of it with a few Hail Maries.

He was also miserably aware that the three other people he loved and trusted — Flora, Julian and Blue — were absolutely furious with him.

‘You behaved abominably, Viking,’ Julian had shouted. ‘Rodney was just saying yesterday how you’d swung the RSO behind Abby. Now you’ve let him down. You’re as repulsive as Anatole in War and Peace. Rake Magdalene, he loved much, so much will be forgiven him. You’re nothing but a fucking havoc-maker.’

Blue was even more upset. Cathie, having learnt about the bet, was refusing to have anything to do with him.

‘How could you men all hurt that lovely warm girl?’

Wandering wearily down the hotel landing, Viking could hear the sound of hair-dryers. Orchestra wives washing their hair to be pretty for their husbands tomorrow, leaving doors open so they could chat to one another. Mary, her hair in rollers, was finishing her sampler. One thing Viking hadn’t given Abby was ‘roots and wings’. God, he felt awful. Davie was asleep on a chaise-longue, a plastered Cyril was declaiming ‘Ulysses’ to a large yucca plant:

‘Old age has yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all, but something ’ere the end

Some work of noble note, may yet be done.’

Viking had only just collapsed into bed wondering whether to ward off suicide or encourage sleep with a large whisky from the mini-bar, when Blue arrived and whispered that he’d finally persuaded Cathie to come back to the room with him.

‘I trapped her in the revolving doors so she couldn’t escape.’

‘Where’s Carmine?’

‘Enjoying a bonk with Nellie, since you bottled out. He left Cathie fast asleep in bed, having taken a Mogadon, or so he thinks.’

‘Bloody risky.’

‘Sure it is, we won’t have long, just bogger off and leave the coast clear.’

‘I won’t watch I promise,’ pleaded Viking, ‘I josst want to crash out.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ hissed Blue, ‘it’s my only chance. Please Viking, or Cathie’ll do a runner — she’s furious with you as it is.’

Wearily, Viking staggered upstairs, wrapped only in a towel, and dragging his duvet and a pillow. He was just banging on the Steel Elf’s door when the lift opened and out stepped Lord and Lady Leatherhead, Knickers and Hilary, all jolly from the official dinner. Trailing after them was a haunted, ghostly-pale Abby.

‘Abby, sweetheart, we mosst talk.’ Viking bounded forward, his only thought to comfort her.

Abby, who’d been on the Fundador on an utterly empty stomach, went beserk.

‘Get out of my life, you fucking son-of-a-bitch,’ she screamed, and slapped him really hard across the face.

With fatal timing, the door behind Viking opened to show the Steel Elf with her hair tied up in a pink bow and wearing a pretty rose-patterned nightgown.

‘Go back to your little prick-teaser, right?’ yelled Abby. ‘Let her put some more beer mats under your elbows, two grand’ll keep up her mortgage for at least six months.’ And with that she lashed her other hand back across Viking’s cheek, cutting it open with Marcus’s ruby.

Lord and Lady Leatherhead and Knickers looked on in horror; Hilary in delight, as Abby ran off down the landing to her suite, slamming the door behind her.

During the sex which took place between Blue and Cathie, which Cathie was far too frightened and ashamed of her body to enjoy, her make-up rubbed off to reveal a dark bruise below her left cheek-bone. She tried to cover up two more on her ribs.

Blue struggled to control his fury.

‘For poorer and poorer, for battered and even more battered, you’ve got to leave him, Cath.’

‘I can’t, I don’t believe in divorce.’

‘I wouldn’t believe in it either if you were married to me.’

Blue tried to kiss her but she jerked her head away. Only that morning Carmine had untruthfully told her her breath smelt, her bottom had dropped and her breasts were like drooping poached eggs.

‘I must go,’ she whispered, but, as she dived for her clothes, so he shouldn’t see her ugly body, Blue caught her wrist pulling her back.

‘I want to tell you a story.’

For a second, Cathie thought he was joking, but his clear blue eyes, the kindest in the world, were completely serious.

‘Once upon a time, there was a beautiful woman, married to a wicked philanderer who constantly diminished her and beat her op. But because she was a good Catholic, who wanted to go to Heaven, she stayed with him for fifty dreadful years.’

Cathie gave a sob.

‘In the end the philanderer died a week before his wife did, and, free of him at last, she arrived on the other side.

‘“Here for all eternity,” said God, welcoming her with open arms, “there’s someone here you know already,” and there on the first fluffy white cloud was her husband shafting an angel.’

There was a long pause. Glancing sideways, Blue saw the bruise getting darker and darker as tears washed away the last vestiges of make-up.

‘Cathie darling, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you’ve got to leave him. No-one will punish you. I’ll look after you, I promise.’

‘I can’t. He’d come after me and he’d kill us both.’

‘I’ll never turn my mobile off,’ Blue was in tears, too. ‘If ever you want me, just ring and I’ll come and get you.’

Imagining the rest of the orchestra and especially Flora trailing home the following morning with no-one to carry her case, George found it impossible to concentrate on his board meeting. He hoped none of the bitches in the orchestra nor those brutes in the brass section nor any section for that matter were pricking Flora’s bubble or wising her up about his thousand and one deficiencies. God, he missed her.

The board meeting had begun with regrets and a minute’s silence for Rodney’s death. Miss Priddock had sobbed all over her shorthand notebook, which made it difficult for her to use her biro, but she had been cheered up by yet another miniature from one of the brewers. Everyone expressed delight that Sonny’s Interruption had been nominated. Peggy Parker bowed graciously.

Then followed the usual moans about poor houses, insufficient sponsors and the rocketing cost of the latest marketing operations which George had introduced.

At least the cat-nip matador he’d brought back from Toledo had been a huge success, thought George. As if to avenge generations of brave bulls, John Drummond was now tossing it up in the air, and pouncing on it.

‘How did the tour go?’ demanded Peggy Parker, noticing George’s total inattention.

‘You better ask Miles — he was there longer than me.’

George was incensed when Miles, after pouring a glass of Lord Leatherhead’s spring water from the silver carafe Hilly had given him for his birthday, rose to his feet and deplored the hooliganism that had poisoned the tour.

‘Although there are still players who know how to act as worthy ambassadors for Rutminster, a crackdown is imperative before the Appleton Piano Competition in ten days’ time,’ emphasized Miles, ‘when the RSO will be scrutinized under the microscope, not only by the music world, but by the international media and the general public.

‘In a word,’ Miles cracked his knuckles, ‘I feel Abigail has lost control of the orchestra.’

‘That was a great many more than one word,’ said George furiously, ‘and your description of the tour is joost as inaccurate. The orchestra played brilliant, made many friends all over Spain and really put Rootminster on the map. They only screwed up on Saturday night because they were choked about Rodney, and that was only after they’d cobbled together the best memorial concert I’ve ever heard. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when they played Nimrod,’ George’s voice shook slightly. ‘Abby did chumpion. It was the first time she’d played in pooblic and she had to conduct as well. She and Rodney were very close.’

‘How close, one wonders,’ said Mrs Parker sourly, ‘I gather Sir Rodney left her his home on Lake Lucerne.’

‘That’s out of order,’ snapped George.

Mrs Parker went puce.

‘And who’s going to foot the bill for the jacuzzi flooding the Don Hoo-an Suite?’ she spluttered.

‘I am,’ said George.

‘And what about Flora Seymour pulling the communication cord on the train to Madrid?’ chuntered Lady Chisleden.

‘Over the defenestration of some cuddly toy,’ said Canon Airlie. George started to laugh. ‘Perhaps some latterday Zola will leap to our defence in the Rootminster Echo,’ he suggested, ‘and start his letter, “J’acuzzi”.’

Everyone looked at him as though he’d gone off his head.

‘Oh forget it,’ said George, then added grimly, ‘you’ve been sneaking, Miles. The reviews were bloody good. Abby’s emerging as a first class conductor. Rachel’s Requiem’s Number Ten in the charts. We’ve got a big hit on our hands.’

‘What news of the merger?’ asked Canon Airlie earnestly. ‘What was the outcome of your discussions with the Arts Council on Wednesday? Did they provide any guidance?’

‘That lot are about as capable of guidance as a droonken guide-dog.’

Canon Airlie pursed his lips.

‘Lousy for morale,’ said a banker, ‘with so many conflicting rumours flying around.’

‘The RSO need a strong leader who can set a good example,’ Mrs Parker glared at George.

‘Why did the jacuzzi flood?’ asked Lady Chisleden.

‘Not really a matter for ladies,’ said Lord Leatherhead hastily, casting an eye at Miss Priddock who was stolidly taking the minutes.

Abandoning his cat-nip matador, John Drummond jumped onto the window-ledge to chatter angrily at two pigeons copulating on the roof. Cat’s television was much better in the summer, when the house martins and swallows flew in and out of the eaves.

They’ve all gone to warmer climes In the South, thought George. That was the tune Flora had played so beautifully at her audition. He looked at his watch. Her plane would be taking off any minute. If he hurried he could meet her at Heathrow. It had been the longest twelve hours of his life.

‘I agree that leadership must come from the top,’ Miles was saying. ‘If there were a merger, I think Rannaldini is the only man who could pull the orchestra together and save us from financial disaster.’

‘Where is Rannaldini?’ enquired Peggy Parker reverently.

‘Recording in Prague with some brilliant young Czech pianist. He always noses out the talent.’

George stubbed out his cigar and rose to his feet. Flora must have told Abby by now.

‘I’m afraid the only merger I’m remotely interested in at the moment is my own,’ he announced. ‘I’d like the board’s permission to take a three-month sabbatical.’

‘But you never take holidays,’ said Miss Priddock aghast. ‘Even durin’ that week’s skiing you worked in the evenings.’

‘Not this time,’ said George proudly. ‘I’m going to take Miss Flora Seymour, the most wonderful young lady round the world, and as soon as I get a divorce, she’s going to marry me.’

There was an absolutely appalled silence.

‘But she’s a member of the orchestra, and about half your age,’ exploded Mrs Parker.

‘And a baggage,’ chuntered Miles.

‘Well, I certainly didn’t put her outside my door at six o’clock,’ said George with a broad grin.

‘I hope you didn’t abuse your position, Hungerford,’ snorted Canon Airlie.

‘Ooterly,’ said George happily. ‘So would you if you’d been me, you old goat.’

‘But who is going to do your job?’ protested Lord Leatherhead. ‘Have left us in rather a hole yer know.’

‘As Miles is so frantic to run the orchestra, let him have a go. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a plane to meet.’

After he’d left and the uproar had subsided, Miles moved into George’s chair at the head of the table.

‘It was hard to talk when George was here, but I think it’s important that you all hear exactly how bad things were on tour and why we ought to replace Abigail as soon as possible.’

Flora’s happiness faded like a conker out of its husk as she struggled off the plane weighed down with presents for George, Trevor and Marcus. Having been briefed about the afternoon in the hot air balloon by Hilary and Juno, the orchestra had been mobbing her up about George all the way home. Some of the remarks had been very bitchy, until Flora had lost her temper and snapped that George loved her and was taking her round the world.

Guffaws greeted this.

As they all shuffled through Customs, Nellie turned to Carmine, who had been behaving in a very smug proprietorial way after two nights on the trot, and said: ‘D’you mind if we don’t walk out into the airport together, Carmine, because my husband’s meeting me,’ which caused even louder guffaws.

Carmine was incensed. As the orchestra mothers charged the barrier to hug their children, and Julian fell into Luisa’s arms, Flora’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I see your grand friend hasn’t come to meet you,’ said Carmine nastily, as they made their way out to the coaches. ‘The only reason he’d want to take you round the world would be to have a bit of free crumpet while he was avoiding tax.’

‘I must not cry,’ said Flora through gritted teeth. But her eyes had misted over so much that when the airport doors opened automatically for Viking and Dixie, who were walking out in front of her, and she caught a glimpse of Trevor the mongrel outside, she knew she was imagining things.

All the same, she ran forward. Then the doors opened again and stayed open like her mouth, for there holding an ecstatically wriggling Trevor, blushing like an autumn sunset, stood George.

Dropping her luggage, and her presents, Flora rushed towards them, and George took his rank-and-file viola player in his arms and kissed her on and on in front of his entire orchestra.

‘Oh George,’ gasped Flora.

‘I’m not taking you round the world, I’ve got a better idea,’ said George.

That evening a delirious Flora telephoned her mother from George’s double bed.

‘Mum, Mum, I’m getting married.’

‘You’re far too young,’ wailed Georgie. ‘Who is he? Where did you meet him? Has he got a job?’

‘He works for the RSO.’

‘I’m not having you throwing yourself away on some penniless musician. I know too many of them.’

‘Mu-um, it’s George Hungerford.’

There was a long pause.

‘The George Hungerford?’

‘None other.’ Giggling, Flora handed the receiver to George so he could hear her mother’s screech of amazement down the telephone.

‘Oh darling, he’ll be able to keep us all in our old age. How lovely, such a sweet man, too. When will you bring him to see us? I suppose he ought to ask Daddy for your hand.’

‘Not until I’ve stopped biting my nails. Actually we thought we’d push off for a holiday first. George wanted to take me round the world, but I said we couldn’t leave Trevor.’

Trevor, who was lying across George’s feet, wiggled his tail.

‘Oh Mum, you’ll never guess what George has done.’

‘What?’

‘You know they don’t allow dogs on beaches any more because of “fouling”. Well, George has bought Trevor a beach all of his own with a sweet little cottage for us thrown in.’

‘Oh, how wonderful,’ said Georgie. ‘Anyone that nice to dogs will make a wonderful husband.’

SIXTY-TWO

The Pellafacini Quintet were very sad to lose their young viola player, but the person totally unhinged by Flora’s whirlwind romance was Abby. Not only was she terribly jealous of Flora’s and George’s almost incandescent happiness, but also how dare Flora land a real man and such a rich, attractive one? How could her singing career not soar with such a back-up? On the other hand, how lucky she was to be able to settle down and play house and have babies. Worst of all, with Rodney dying and George’s departure, Abby felt utterly defenceless.

‘You can’t quit now. There’s the Appleton coming up,’ she railed at George. ‘And I’ve had an enquiry today about taking the orchestra to the States.’

George found he couldn’t give a stuff.

‘Miles will cope, he’s very capable.’

‘He’s no good at zapping mergers. Can’t you wait till after the Appleton?’

‘Flora’s my noomber one priority, now,’ said George firmly. ‘I’m not going to let that slip through my fingers. Work ruined my last marriage. It’s only for three months.’

Abby felt the peacekeeping forces had left the orchestra. Even worse with Flora gone, she and Marcus were thrown into each other’s company. Abby felt increasingly bad about betraying him with Viking. How long would it be before one of those rogues in the orchestra tipped him off — probably in the middle of the Appleton.

When she finally got home, having made a detour via Lucerne for Rodney’s funeral, she couldn’t meet Marcus’s eyes and became even more aggressive through guilt.

‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling for days. Oh, there you are, baby,’ as a mewing Scriabin came running down the stairs, ‘I was so worried about you.’

‘Mrs Diggory’s been looking after them,’ stammered Marcus, ‘and George came and collected Trevor. Isn’t it amazing about him and Flora?’

‘Don’t change the subject. How could you push off and leave them?’ Abby looked lovingly down at Scriabin, who was now purring in her arms, sucking at her jersey like a baby.

‘My asthma got so bad,’ mumbled Marcus, ‘and the cats missed you and kept coming into the studio and Howie isn’t getting me any work so I flew over to Prague and tried to set up a cheap record deal.’

He didn’t add that Boris’s and Abby’s promises back in March of conducting and bankrolling him had never materialized.

‘Any luck?’ asked Abby.

‘I’m waiting to hear.’

Even Abby in her state of preoccupation noticed he looked awful, dreadfully thin and pale but with an unnatural hectic flush on his cheeks, and the rash of too many steroids speckling his mouth. By the time he’d carried her cases upstairs, he could hardly breathe and collapsed wheezing onto the bed.

‘How was the tour?’

‘So so, great houses, great performances, but Rodney died.’ Abby was angrily crashing coat-hangers along rails to make more room.

‘I know — I’m desperately sorry.’

‘Whatever for? You only met him once.’

‘I knew what he meant to you.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. I’m exhausted.’ Then, knowing she was being vile, added, ‘You look wiped out, too.’

‘I’ve been working on stuff for the Appleton.’

‘What have you chosen?’

‘A Bach prelude, Liszt’s B Minor Sonata, a little suite of Boris’s. Great that he’s gone to Number Ten in the Charts.’

‘Great that the orchestra’s gone to Number Ten,’ corrected Abby sharply, crashing pots and bottles down on her dressing-table.

‘What are you doing in the second round?’

‘Chopin Etudes, the Grande Polonaise, a couple of Debussy Preludes and the Waldstein.’

‘Not the Appassionata?’

Marcus blushed. ‘I made such a cock-up at Cotchester.’

That was what he’d decided to play today, but such was his panic and indecision, nothing sounded any good and he kept changing his mind. There was music all over the floor of his normally tidy studio.

Helen, who hadn’t recovered from Rannaldini disappearing with Flora after The Creation, hadn’t helped by ringing at all hours.

‘I thought she’d cheer up when she heard about Flora and George. But she seems curiously pissed off that Flora’s landed such an ace bloke. She’s already channelled her suspicions in another direction, some Czech pianist, called Natalia, who’s entered for the Appleton, and evidently Rannaldini’s seeing a lot of Hermione.’

‘Helen shouldn’t hassle you,’ fumed Abby, finding a genuine excuse for fury. ‘How can you concentrate when she’s on your back all the time?’

‘It’s OK. She’s got to dump somewhere.’

Abby was frantic for Marcus to make love to her, but when he almost shrank away, she manufactured a row, seized the nearest Barbour and stormed out for a walk.

There were lights on in The Bordello, but finding herself helplessly drawn towards them, she realized it was only the setting sun shining across the lake, turning both water and window-panes to gold. She had never physically ached for someone so much in her life as Viking.

By the time she had reached the end of the lake, the sun had deepened to blazing vermilion, its reflection now cooling its burning body in the lake. Oh God, if only it were as easy to extinguish desire.

Delving in the Barbour pocket for a tissue to wipe her eyes she found, amid the debris of leaves and wild flowers, a torn-up letter in Marcus’s handwriting. Piecing it together with trembling hands she read:

My darling, darling, darling A,

I am dying for you, I can’t go on. I never believed it was possible to miss anyone so much or so impossible to suppress my desperate, desperate longing.

Then there was a quote from Pushkin, ending: ‘What can my heart do but burn, it has no choice.’

How darling of Marcus to leave the poem in Russian, knowing she understood the language. Abby felt ashamed but happier. Two loves have I of comfort and despair, and she must concentrate on the love that comforted her.

Going into H.P. Hall after a sleepless night worrying how many of the musicians would know by now about her and Viking, she was cheered by a wonderfully funny piece of news.

On the notice-board next to details for the Appleton where tails and black dresses would be worn was an announcement that Sonny Parker’s Interruption had won a Gramophone Award for the best CD of contemporary music.

That would mean another hundred thousand pounds from Mother Parker.

Forgetting George was on sabbatical, Abby barged into his office for a giggle to find Miles heavily ensconced. George’s squashy leather sofas, his high-tech toys, his models of tower blocks and Regency façades, the fridge full of drink, the Edward Burra and the Keith Vaughan, all had been replaced by a functional oatmeal hessian sofa, a totally empty desk and some very uncomfortable chairs. The decorators had obviously been at work, slapping beige emulsion over the shredded ginger suede walls.

‘I thought George had only gone for three months,’ said Abby aghast.

‘Everything’s very much in the air at the moment,’ said Miles coolly. ‘Please don’t let that cat in and I’d prefer it if you knocked.’

‘Very minimalist,’ Abby looked round the room, then attempting a joke, because she suddenly felt so nervous, ‘to match Jessica’s minis.’

Miles ignored John Drummond’s piteous mewings.

‘Jessica’s left,’ he said curtly.

‘Whatever for? She really cheered us up with those typing errors.’

‘Important for morale,’ Miles smiled thinly, ‘for the orchestra to realize we’re prepared to make cuts on the admin side as well.’

‘But the sponsors just adored her.’

‘Actually she left of her own accord. She realized she would be expected, now George isn’t around, to do a little more than pour champagne and forget to hand in lottery tickets.

‘Far more interestingly,’ Miles cracked his knuckles joyfully, ‘Rannaldini has just been appointed musical director of the CCO,’ then, at Abby’s look of horror, continued, ‘He’ll still retain his directorships in New York, Berlin and Tokyo, of course.’

‘Then he won’t have time to look after the CCO,’ snapped Abby. ‘They’ll be short-changed like everyone else.’

‘Course they won’t. Don’t be so needlessly spiteful. The Arts Council are delighted,’ said Miles looking equally pleased, ‘and having someone of Sir Roberto’s calibre near by should put you all on your mettle.’

Miles certainly hadn’t purchased any kid gloves in Spain.

‘So Rannaldini’s now in a prime position to merge us and the CCO,’ blurted out Abby. Oh why couldn’t she keep her trap shut?

‘Rannaldini’s a wonderful musician — ’ for a second Miles’s eyes contained a flicker of genuine warmth — ‘and a natural disciplinarian.’

‘Viking wouldn’t stand for that.’

‘Viking’s left us, too,’ said Miles silkily.

‘W-w-what?’ whispered Abby, bruising her spine as she collapsed onto one of the uncomfortable chairs. ‘Where? When? How?’

‘He resigned this morning.’

‘But why?’

‘To be quite honest, I think he’s bored. He’s been here eight years. Nothing to keep him. Should have gone to London years ago.’

‘But he’s the best player we’ve got and he’s under contract.’

‘We thought he was, too, and that we could hold him at least until after the Appleton, but when we checked, it ran out last month. There was nothing we could do.’

‘But all the contracts have been renewed.’

‘It seems they haven’t. George has been a shade lax.’

‘But this is awful. Viking lifted the orchestra with every note.’

As if in agreement, John Drummond’s black paw appeared supplicatingly under the door.

‘Viking is a dangerous influence,’ said Miles briskly. ‘Quinton is far less erratic, more responsible and can’t wait to sort out the section; Rannaldini agrees.’

‘What’s he got to do with it?’ hissed Abby.

‘When he did The Creation he thought Viking was very overrated. Big fish in a small polluted pond, to quote yourself, and didn’t he know it.’ Miles rose to his feet. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Abby, after your little tantrum in Toledo in front of the chairman and his wife, not to mention Nicholas and Hilly,’ his voice thickened lasciviously as he mentioned her name, ‘I thought you would be delighted he’s left us. Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ he said chillingly.

As he moved forward to open the door for her, Abby thought for a second he was going to stamp on Drummond’s twitching paw. Prufrock had become Robespierre overnight.

Outside she found Miss Priddock in tears.

‘Mr Hungerford loved cats, he’s left some money so I can go on buying Drummond a lottery ticket every week.’

Utterly stunned, Abby sought out the Celtic Mafia, who looked bleak and said Viking had flown back to Ireland. None of them would elaborate.

‘Didn’t he leave me any message?’ pleaded Abby.

‘He left you this,’ said Blue.

It was a cheque for two thousand pounds for the Cats’ Protection League.

Poor Abby had to go straight into rehearsal. They were playing The Fairy’s Kiss which had a fiendishly difficult horn solo. Quinton played it well enough, but there was no halo round the interpretation. The rest of the horn section looked suicidal. Even the prospect of his marriage to Jenny couldn’t raise Lincoln’s spirits. Cyril was wearing a black armband.

‘I reckon Viking was greater than Dennis Brain,’ he kept saying.

And now that George and Viking have gone, Miles will have you out by the end of the week, thought Abby.

Suddenly Noriko started crying and rushed off the stage. Cherub dropped his drumsticks and rushed off to comfort her. Abby felt the implicit blame of the entire orchestra. It was monstrously unfair. Viking had been in the wrong, he’d made the bet.

In the afternoon they rehearsed Mahler’s First Symphony, which had three trumpets playing off stage. Believing Carmine and Randy were deliberately bitching her up, coming in at the wrong moment and much too loud, Abby screamed at them to put socks in it. The next time the passage was so quiet, no-one could hear it. Abby was left flailing in space. Knickers discovered the trumpeters playing darts in the band room.

‘She insisted we play pianissimo, she can’t have heard us,’ protested Randy innocently.

So Abby made them do it again. And Randy played it from his car; everyone could hear him revving up and started to laugh.

Storming out to the car-park, Abby noticed Viking’s empty parking place had been taken by Quinton’s very clean Rover and burst into tears. Desolate, she drove home to find Marcus had lit a fire and left her some melon, chicken Kiev and a note saying he loved her.

Marcus is the one true thing in my life, Abby told herself numbly, I must cling on to him.

She was roused by the doorbell. Standing outside was a raddled but very sexy-looking blonde. Her name was Beatrice, she said, and she was a freelance who fed copy to most of the papers, particularly the music magazines.

‘I only talk to the media if it’s authorized by the RSO press office.’ Abby was about to slam the door.

‘I only wanted to give you this,’ Beatrice smiled winningly. ‘I was in Megagram’s press office and asked what was hot, and guess what they produced?’

A gust of wind seemed to blow her and a shower of leaves into the house. Abby gave a crow of delight as Beatrice handed her a galley of ‘Madly in Love’, the pop tune she and Marcus had recorded without Marcus knowing at the Christmas party. On the sleeve was a picture of Marcus looking wildly romantic at the piano, Abby had her arm round him, her cheek against his, her fiddle in her left hand.

‘I didn’t think Megagram were going to release it till January,’ squeaked Abby in excitment.

‘They’ve brought it forward and they’re very high on it. They want to cash in on the success of Rachel’s Requiem.’

‘How does it sound?’

‘Great,’ said Beatrice, ‘all the clapping and cheering in the background adds to the fun. He’s a fantastic pianist. You sound wonderful, too. Even better than you did in the old days.’ Then, very carefully, she added: ‘Is it true he’s Rupert Campbell-Black’s son?’

‘Oh Christ,’ Abby glanced at the sleeve. ‘Have they put in the “Campbell”? Marcus will go ballistic. He’s crazy to get to the top on his own.’

‘Sell more records,’ said Beatrice cosily, ‘better publicity for the orchestra, and for him.’

After they had played the single, which had colossal charm, Beatrice produced a bottle of champagne.

‘We must toast the new Richard Clayderman.’

‘I ought to give you a drink,’ said Abby.

‘I can put it on expenses.’

Oh why not, thought Abby, Marcus always shied away from publicity, but he wouldn’t be back for hours, and she would at last have a chance to push his career and the record. Unbeknownst to Howie she had made her share of the royalties over to the orchestra.

Nor did Beatrice know that the RSO had been chosen to accompany the finalists in the Appleton, and was so thrilled for Abby. She really was a delightful woman, despite her rather tarty looks, decided Abby, and it was such a relief to meet someone enthusiastic about success. The Brits were generally so carping.

‘D’you mind if I switch on my tape-recorder? I hate not getting the facts right?’ asked Beatrice.

After three-quarters of a bottle and no food all day, Abby forgot to emphasize what was off the record and what on.

‘This is the record that matters,’ said Beatrice, picking up the sleeve of ‘Madly in Love’. ‘I must say Marcus is almost as devasting as his famous father.’

‘More so,’ said Abby, clumsily trying to tug open a drawer in a nearby desk which had expanded because of the damp. Then it gave, and she pulled it out altogether, scattering photographs all over the floor.

‘My God,’ Beatrice dropped to her knees leafing through everything. ‘Pretty girl, who’s that?’

‘Flora Seymour, she shared the cottage with Marcus and me until last week.’

‘And my goodness, look at that.’ It was a topless Abby stretched out on the grass. Marcus, stripped to the waist, lay beside her, his head on her shoulder, his hand trailing across her ribs.

‘What a beautiful picture, pure Calvin Klein,’ Beatrice examined it in rapture.

‘Flora took it one afternoon. Great, isn’t it?’

‘Certainly is and he is gorgeous. What a profile and that gentle passionate mouth. No wonder he wows them on the platform. No wonder Megagram are thrilled to bits.’

She emptied the rest of the champagne into Abby’s glass. ‘How does he get on with Rupert?’

‘When are you hoping to get married?’ Beatrice asked finally. She was now kneeling on the floor with her scarlet dress rucked up, and her thighs wide apart so you could see her black lace panties. Her blond bob fell over her hot brown eyes and she displayed a rift of cleavage where the three top buttons were undone.

Viking would have had her upstairs in five seconds flat, thought Abby in sudden anguish.

‘He only has to say, “Hi, sweetheart” in that peat-soft voice and he’s got them horizontal in the car-park.’ She could hear Hugo’s envious disgruntled voice as though it were only yesterday.

‘You OK?’ said Beatrice.

‘Fine,’ mumbled Abby. ‘Must go to the John. Fine,’ she repeated, cannoning off the doorway. Out in the garden she collapsed against an old apple tree, sobbing her heart out. When would she even see Viking again? By the time she’d splashed her face and wiped away the streaked mascara and pulled herself together, Beatrice had her coat on.

‘Mustn’t take up any more of your time. I’m such a fan, you’re so much prettier in the flesh and look so much younger! I hope to get up to the Appleton. Perhaps you and Marcus would have dinner with me. At least, can I have your autograph on my notebook?’

Abby didn’t tell Marcus about Beatrice’s visit. He had inherited Rupert’s pathological loathing of the Press, and she couldn’t remember which papers Beatrice had said she worked for, but the piece was bound to be friendly. She’d been so excited for Abby. Anyway Abby wanted to surprise Marcus with a lovely boost to his career.

SIXTY-THREE

Beatrice’s story broke in The Scorpion two days before the Appleton. CHIP OFF THE OLD BLACK said the headline.

The photograph taken by Flora had been blown up and cropped just above the waist so Abby and Marcus looked naked in each other’s arms. ‘L’Appassionata’s Madly in Love’, said the caption.

Abby was quoted as saying that she and Marcus were secretly engaged and planning to make the announcement after the Appleton, so people wouldn’t accuse Abby of favouring Marcus if her orchestra had to accompany him in the finals.

‘I sure hope he’s going to win, but naturally we’ll treat all the contestants the same.’

The copy then switched to the record itself which Abby had had secretly made at Christmas as a surprise present for Marcus.

‘“Everyone thinks Marcus is wealthy, but he hasn’t spoken to his snooty dad in two years.” Rupert cut him off after a family tiff and he is too proud to take any money from his multi-millionaire stepdad, Sir Roberto Rannaldini (family motto: I will dump from a great height).

“I admire Marcus more than any boy I know,” enthuses Abby. “He sold the twenty-thousand-pound painting by horse artist Alf Munnings his dad gave him for his twenty-first to buy me a ruby engagement ring and he is a wonderful, caring and tender lover. But I hope one day that he, Rupert and Sir Roberto will be reconciled, perhaps at our wedding.”’

There was a lot of guff about Abby having slashed her wrist four years ago:

‘When she caught her agent and married lover cheating on her with his secretary: but Abby’s certainly turned her career around. Just back from a wildly successful tour of Spain, next week it’s the Appleton, and she still dreams of taking her orchestra on tour to the US. “But Marcus comes first,” sighs L’Appassionata. “His career is more important because we’re madly in love.”’

Abby had never seen Marcus really angry before.

‘How could you, Abby, how fucking could you?’ he yelled. ‘You know I never wanted to get anywhere on Dad’s back, and how could you say I flogged the Munnings? How d’you think Dad’s going to feel, and Mum? And you’ve totally buggered any chance I might have had in the Appleton. Even if I get through the first round they’ll say you pulled strings, or Rannaldini has, and finally that fucking record, you know how I feel about pop music.’

He was blue in the face, gasping for breath, clinging onto the kitchen table.

‘Don’t you remember me warning you. Beattie Johnson was Dad’s mistress between marriages, and his nemesis,’ he went on furiously. ‘She’s been trying to bring him down ever since.’

‘She stitched me up too, right?’ screamed Abby, ‘She never let on she was from The Scorpion, it was all off the record. I thought she was a legit music critic, or Megagram wouldn’t have given her an advance copy. It’s their fault for telling her where I live.’

‘It’s your bloody fault; why d’you always blame everyone else?’

‘I wanted people to know how good you are. Someone’s got to blow your own trumpet. You won’t.’

‘By putting out some fucking pop record. Why the hell didn’t you ask me? Because you knew I’d say no.’

‘Because I knew you needed the money.’ Abby was now hurling insults as if they were crockery. ‘I’m sick of having to pay for everything. I’m sick of you wasting your energy on stupid pupils. I’d quite like to be taken somewhere nice occasionally, get a few flowers and chocolates, the odd pin. If it becomes a hit you’ll make a bomb.’

‘Bombs bloody maim and destroy people. Anyway, why the hell did you give them that photograph?’

‘She stole it without asking. I only wanted to show her how beautiful you were. There must be some reason I’m throwing myself away on a penniless wimp.’

The telephone rang. Abby ran out of the room. Marcus picked it up, so short of breath he could only croak, ‘Hallo.’

It was Helen. Marcus steeled himself. But his mother was surprisingly chipper. Abby had given her a very good press, and had been quoted as saying:

‘Marcus gets his looks from his beautiful mother, she’s very supportive of him and is the only member of his family he can relate to.’

‘After all,’ protested Helen, ‘Abby hasn’t said anything that isn’t true. You and she are madly in love. Rupert has been fiendish to you all his life, and given you no encouragement at all. And everyone will buy the record now. Abby only meant it as a surprise. Everyone will understand it was just a bit of fun at the office Christmas party. And it’s wonderful publicity for both you and the RSO.’

‘I don’t want to be a fucking pop star.’

‘Kiri and Placido cross over — didn’t do them any harm. You’re overreacting — don’t excite yourself before the competition. At least you and Abby really love each other.’ Helen’s voice broke. ‘I’m sure Rannaldini’s got someone else. He was checking his Interflora bill, but when I came into the room yesterday, his hand shot down over it like a guillotine.’

‘You shouldn’t bloody well have married him,’ howled Marcus, slamming down the telephone.

What was happening to him?

Immediately it rang again. It was the Sun and then the Mail, then the Express and then the whole of Fleet Street, and soon the cars were crunching over the conker husks, splashing up the path to Woodbine Cottage.

‘The only time I escape fucking tension is when I walk out onto the platform,’ Marcus yelled at a flabbergasted Abby.

The RSO the next day were almost as hostile. Management, i.e. Miles rewed up by Hilly, were horrified by the picture in The Scorpion.

‘Ghastly vulgar publicity,’ he told Abby furiously, ‘musical directors should not emulate Page Three girls. Any sense of gravitas is totally destroyed and Miss Priddock’s been fielding calls from the tabloids all day.’

‘Then buy her some gloves and a baseball cap,’ snarled Abby.

The Arts Council were also appalled. Gwynneth was particularly disapproving because Gilbert, having bought his own copy of The Scorpion, seemed to spend an unconscionable time reading the headline, the caption and the few lines of text flanking Abby’s naked boobs.

Peggy Parker and Canon Airlie had collective coronaries.

The rehearsals that day were even more acrimonious. When Abby came in to conduct Tchaikovsky’s Sixth every single player except Hilary was hidden behind a copy of The Scorpion, and all started singing ‘Madly in Love’. Abby started yelling at them and things went from bad to worse.

‘If you don’t get your act together after the break I’m walking out,’ shouted Abby.

‘Good,’ said Old Henry to everyone’s amazement.

‘Whaddid you say?’

‘He said, “good”,’ shouted Nellie. ‘Can’t you get it into your thick head, Abby, that without Viking the Pathétique is absolutely pathetic.’

Nor did Abby get any help at home. For a few days the Press hung around like starlings settling noisily on a tree, then just as suddenly they all flew off leaving the tree bare and bereft. Marcus retreated into his studio, practising for ten or eleven hours a day until the pieces held no surprises for him. He found it impossible to relax and kept a score beside him at mealtimes as a wall between him and Abby. Unable to sleep since she’d returned, he had retreated at nights to the studio, but was also getting up at first light to intercept the post in case a letter arrived from Alexei.

The morning after the Press took their departure he had heard Dixie’s springer spaniel barking down at The Bordello, and knew the postman would reach Woodbine Cottage in a couple of minutes.

Leaping out of bed, he had hurtled across the lawn, round the corner of the cottage, slap into Abby, wrapped in a towel, hoping for the miracle of a letter from Viking. Both jumped guiltily.

‘I was hoping to hear from Philadelphia,’ mumbled Abby.

‘I was h-h-hoping to h-h-hear from the record company in Prague,’ stammered Marcus.

But all the postman produced was an ecstatic postcard from. Flora and the telephone bill, which Marcus pocketed instantly. ‘I’ll pay that, you’ve picked up far too many bills recently.’ Anything to stop Abby seeing the itemized calls to Moscow.

‘Come back to bed, Markie,’ pleaded Abby.

Marcus shook his head.

‘Ought to have a bath first, I just fell into bed like a polecat last night.’

‘Oh OK, if you feel like that.’ Abby retreated upstairs banging her bedroom door.

As Marcus soaked in the last of Flora’s bath oil, he noticed a pale sun looking at him from the marble tiles on the right of the bath. The tiles were picking up the sun’s reflection in the mirror opposite. It gave Marcus the creeps that the sun, hovering unseen and in apparent innocence outside, could watch him naked in the bath. Just like the Press, thought Marcus with a shiver. He kept hearing the collective rattle of himself and skeletons coming out of the closet.

He had made heroic attempts to be faithful to Abby, but five weeks ago Alexei had sent him a pair of emerald cuff-links with just one sentence: ‘Here are two green eyes of the monster who is jealous of anyone you even talk to.’

And Marcus had weakened and written back, and Alexei and he had been ringing up and writing to each other ever since. Finally when the RSO was in Spain, Marcus had flown out to Prague for four days, on the pretext of looking for a record deal, but instead spending every second with Alexei, growing more and more hopelessly in love. It was as though he had found a part of himself that had always been missing.

There had been a performance of the ballet Don Quixote on the second night. And although Marcus almost expired with desire and pride as he watched Alexei bringing the Prague audience over and over again cheering to their feet in stupified wonder, he realized he loved the man, not just the great star.

In a few years’ time, Alexei would have to give up dancing, probably to become a wonderfully autocratic director, but Marcus wanted to be there to take care of him while he made the adjustment.

Alexei, on the one hand, was still playing word games, insisting art was more important than love and that he and Marcus were owned by the world.

‘Ballet devour your whole life.’

But it didn’t stop him trying to persuade Marcus to leave Abby.

‘It will be perfectly better for you to live in Moscow weeth me.’

But Marcus, wiped out once more by ecstasy and guilt, had returned to England, insisting they must never see each other again and Alexei had stormed off in a fury, accusing Marcus of cowardice and hypocrisy.

It was this guilt that had made Marcus react so strongly to The Scorpion piece: Abby trumpeting fortissimo to the world of their passion for one another, when he was totally fogged with love for Alexei.

As he lay in the cooling water, Marcus noticed a bottle on the side for detangling hair. If only it could detangle his life.

When he settled down to practise he was so tired that he kept making stupid mistakes.

Much later as the light faded he went for a walk. Sibelius and Scriabin followed him, pouncing on gold leaves which were tumbling out of the wood. The sun, which had spied on him earlier, was now huge, orange and warming the slim bare limbs of the trees, so beautiful freed of their clothing of leaves, they reminded him of Alexei.

He hadn’t heard a word from Rupert or Taggie since The Scorpion. They were probably too outraged and saddened to get in touch. How dare Abby say Helen was the only person he related to, when Taggie had always given him so much love and understanding.

Ahead Marcus could see the lights of the cottage. Abby must have come home early. He found her still in her overcoat, gazing hopelessly at a burnt-out kettle. Sobbing hysterically, she collapsed against him.

‘I’m desperately sorry, Markie. My foot’s like a colander I’ve shot myself in it so often. I’ve just turned your evening-shirt blue putting it in the same wash as my scarf.’

The Fat Controller was guesting at the RSO for the next week, she continued, so she was pushing off to Philadelphia to clinch the American tour.

‘I lied to Miles that I was going to see Mom. He’d be so fucking smug if the tour didn’t come off, and if it does I guess it’s the only way the orchestra’ll forgive me. You’d think it was me sacked Viking. Anyway it’ll get me out of your hair and theirs. You all need a break.’

‘I need you to tell me what to do in the first round,’ protested Marcus, but only to comfort her.

Abby gulped. ‘You’re the sweetest liar. You’ll be far better on your own. I’ll fly back on Thursday morning and come straight up to Appleton for the finals the next day.’

‘Aren’t you cutting it a bit fine?’ said Marcus in alarm. Abby was going to have to conduct six concertos. ‘It’s a hell of a marathon.’

‘It won’t give me time to be scared. Imagine five million viewers.’

She was so tired it took her ages to pack, dragging out her power suits with shoulder pads to impress the conservative and sometimes stuffy American cultural committees. The cats kept getting into her cases; she loathed the idea of them going to a cattery, but at least they’d be together.

When, at last, she wandered across the moonlit lawn to Marcus’s studio, the crowded stars were listening enraptured to the last joyful tumultuous bars of the Schumann concerto.

‘You and I are going to play that together in the finals,’ said Abby, massaging his shoulders.

‘Some hope. It’s tempting fate to work on it when I know I won’t get that far. Did you know Benny’s entered, and a mass of other seriously good people.’

‘You’ll zap the lot of them. You know Rodney always sang “To the Life Boats, to the Life Boats”, during that bit in the last movement, when every pianist wants to jump ship because it’s so difficult to cope with the cross-rhythms. Play it again. I’ll be the orchestra.’

‘Promise to sing it slowly,’ Marcus flipped back the pages.

‘I promise. “To the Life Boats, to the Life Boats, to the Life Boats,”’ sang Abby, faster and faster, with Marcus frantically scurrying to keep up, until they collapsed in hysterical laughter for the first time in days until Abby’s laughter turned once more to tears.

‘Make love to me, Marcus. It’s been so long, I need it so badly.’

Falling on each other, they tried to eradicate the memories of Viking and Alexei. For Marcus, it was as if he were attempting to quench a frantic thirst with great gulps of sea water. At least he hoped he had satisfied Abby. She fell asleep in his arms immediately. The studio was flooded with moonlight. On her right hand, clutching the pillow, Marcus’s ruby glowed like a drop of blood. Burning through the floorboards, under the bed, were Alexei’s hidden love letters, his Rolex and the emerald cuff-links.

White in the moon the long road lies

That leads me from my love, thought Marcus despairingly.

As Abby slept, he stole out of the studio and across the dewy lawn, his heart pounding. He didn’t even have to memorize the code for Moscow. But there was no answer. Alexei must have found other arms.