Appassionata

TWENTY

Abby was as driven as a conductor as she had been as a violinist. Sweeping into the Old Rectory, she hardly noticed how ill Marcus was looking.

It was ironic that one of the pieces he had to help her learn was Ein Heldenleben, a Hero’s Life, Richard Strauss’s tone poem, which included a portrait of Pauline, Strauss’s capricious, demanding wife. Abby was a lot like Pauline, thought Marcus. She interrupted him for help whether he was practising or just firing off hundreds of letters to orchestra managers, concert halls and music clubs in a desperate attempt to get work. She had also commandeered Marcus’s CD player and would drag him out of bed in the middle of the night to listen to some rival violinist as she sobbed: ‘I’m better than that, aren’t I?’

This would have been the ideal moment for Marcus to have made a move. But he was haunted by his failure with Rupert’s hooker, so each time he bottled out, lying for hours afterwards twitching with desire.

He was also heartbroken that he couldn’t afford to stay on at the Academy. When Rannaldini and Helen returned from their extended honeymoon, he would have to move into a tiny room in Ealing. He could pay the rent and keep up the instalments on the Steinway, on which fourteen-thousand pounds was still owing, only if he took half a dozen pupils a day. By the time he’d paid off his college debts, the bank had started bouncing cheques. He had torn up all his credit cards. The only card in his pocket was Pablo Gonzales’s, but meeting him now seemed like a dream. Marcus didn’t have the bottle to write to him. His asthma was awful, he couldn’t walk twenty yards without stopping to rest.

If Abby was exhausting, she was also expensive. Seeing such a large, beautiful house (and this was only Marcus’s mother’s place. Flora had already told her about the glories of Penscombe), Abby assumed Marcus was just another trust-fund baby, and Marcus was too proud to tell her otherwise. As she had lived with Rodney, now she would live with Marcus. She was not grasping, her records had left her very well provided for, just thoughtless. Having worked for twelve hours sustained only by Granny Smiths and black coffee, she would emerge at dinner time.

‘I’m exhausted and absolutely starved.’

If dinner wasn’t ready, she would insist they took her scores out to the nearest restaurant where, having wolfed down a couple of baskets of bread, she often found she wasn’t hungry when the two courses she’d ordered arrived, and Marcus, being his father’s son, picked up the bill.

Back at the Old Rectory her mess spread from room to room, and had to be hurriedly tidied away by Marcus each time a buyer arrived to look at the house.

As the concert approached, Abby grew more histrionic, dickering over what to wear on the night — ‘I gotta look dignified and drop-dead gorgeous’ — and having screaming matches with Howie Denston, her agent.

The new Lady Rannaldini, thought Marcus, would go bananas when she saw the telephone bill, but that was Sir Roberto’s problem.

Mrs Edwards was in her element.

‘Lady Rannaldini’s residence,’ she would announce as journalists started ringing up, so they simply assumed Abby was Rannaldini’s protégée.

To keep the tabloids at bay, Howie installed bouncers. As a result the more enterprising reporters disguised themselves as prospective buyers. The man from the Telegraph got so into the part he even put in a bid for the Old Rectory, and was furious to be gazumped later in the week by a girl from the Independent.

Marcus took two days off to hold Abby’s hand. For a start, he drove her down to Rutminster.

‘How far is it?’

‘Malise and I always reckoned it was Beethoven’s Ninth to Rutminster and The Creation to Cotchester.’

‘It would have been far quicker in the Aston,’ said Abby petulantly.

As a last-ditch measure, to appease the bank manager, Marcus, the day before, had sold his beloved Aston and bought a third-hand, mustard-yellow Maestro, which Abby didn’t feel had sufficient gravitas. She was not even amused by jokes about taking the Maestro down in the Maestro. The next two days were going to be lean on laughs, thought Marcus with a sigh. Still, it was a beautiful day, with primroses fizzing along the bright green verges like sherbert and the cottage gardens still full of daffodils.

After a steep climb, Marcus stopped the car.

‘Get your head out of Richard Strauss for a sec and look at that.’

Abby gasped with joy for down below in a bowl of wooded hills softened by opal-blue mist, rising from the same River Fleet that flowed through Cotchester, lay the ancient town of Rutminster. There was the racecourse where Rupert’s horses battled with Rannaldini’s to win the famous Rutminster Cup. There was the cathedral, its spire soaring into the air like a litter prong trying to catch the tiny, paper-white clouds hurtling across the the bright blue sky. Along the river bank, weeping willows rinsed their blond hair in the glittering aquamarine water.

‘There’s the Herbert Parker Hall, where the gig is,’ said Marcus, pointing out a hulking Victorian monstrosity standing in its own park to the west of the town.

‘How awesome,’ sighed Abby, oblivious of the hideous proportions and the ox-blood walls which clashed vilely with the faded russet of the rest of the High Street.

‘Who was Herbert Parker?’ she asked.

‘Oh, some nineteenth-century haberdasher who made his pile and then built one. His descendants own Parker and Parker, the department store in the High Street. That Queen Anne house, overlooking the river to the east of the town, is the Old Bell Hotel where you’re staying.

‘What you can’t see is the secret passage from H.P. Hall, as it’s known, to the Shaven Crown in the High Street. You’ll be sent flying during the break by stampeding musicians. Goodness, they’ve got portaloos, they must be expecting huge crowds.’

Dropping into the valley, they entered thick woods. Through the first faint blur of hawthorn and larch, gleamed a lake, reminding Abby of Lucerne and the ghost horn player. Then she jumped at the sight of her own photograph smouldering down from a large oak tree. From then on, there were ‘L’Appassionata’ posters everywhere.

‘Oh Marcus,’ her voice quivered, ‘I feel as if I’m coming home.’

Even though the concert wasn’t until the following night, Rutminster swarmed with Press. Megagram, Abby’s record producers, were reissuing all her old records and had spent a lot of money promoting the concert. The tickets could have been sold five times over. Big screens had been put up in the park, so disappointed punters could watch from outside for a tenner.

Double cherries lining the path up to H.P. Hall were still in bud.

‘We thought of forcing them out with a blowlamp in your honour,’ said Mark Carling, the extremely harassed managing director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra who came rushing out to shake Abby’s hand.

He had thinning mousy hair, and tired red-rimmed eyes peering furtively through granny spectacles which seemed too small for his big, worried face. Desperately shy, he found the social side of running an orchestra a torment.

‘I’m in the middle of a rather sticky conversation with the Arts Council, who tend to call the shots. I hope you’ll forgive me, if my secretary, Miss Priddock, shows you round. Miss Priddock’s very much the power behind the throne,’ he said, scuttling off in relief.

Miss Priddock had once been pretty and for a brief period Sir Rodney’s. Plump, mono-bosomed and given to pussy-cat bows, she looked as though she pulled on her blue-rinsed hair like a tea cosy each morning. She lived in the Close with John Drummond, a large, self-important black cat with a white shirt-front which made him look as if he were wearing tails. Drummond, who accompanied Miss Priddock to work and doubled up as office mouser, was known as the ‘purr behind the throne’.

Seeing the imperceptible toss of Abby’s head that she was being abandoned to a secretary, Miss Priddock mentally branded Abby ‘a madam’ and said they had never had a concert like this before. Poor Mr Carling was run off his feet.

‘He’s lucky to have you,’ said Marcus, sensing ruffled feathers. ‘You must be seriously busy.’

‘I deal with everything,’ said Miss Priddock, ushering them into a palatial foyer, whose peeling burnt-sienna walls were almost entirely hidden by L’Appassionata publicity material.

‘Light bulbs, blocked toilets, computers breaking down,’ she went on, ‘they run to me. I’m also Clare Rayner to the entire orchestra. If they’re homesick, got marital problems, can’t pay their mortgage or the gas bill, they end up in my office. I can’t do much, but I’m a good listener.’

And a conceited old bag, thought Abby, as led by John Drummond, his black tail erect, Miss Priddock swept them along the inevitable labyrinths where under naked light bulbs, groups of musicians pretended not to stare.

‘This is the band room,’ added Miss Priddock, ‘where the musicians relax, and this is the hospitality room where we entertain sponsors and friends of the orchestra.’

‘And this is the instrument room.’ Flinging open the door, Miss Priddock surprised a couple in flagrante. Abby caught a quick glimpse of a girl spread-eagled naked on the glockenspiel, her long silver-blond hair trailing like a River Fleet willow. Beside her stood an equally blond man with wicked slitty dark eyes and broad bare shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Unbuttoning his jeans with one hand, he had the other rammed between the girl’s legs.

Miss Priddock didn’t turn a blue-rinsed hair.

‘Buck up, Viking,’ she said briskly, ‘rehearsal begins in ten minutes,’ and almost dotingly closed the door.

‘Who was that?’ asked Abby, flabbergasted.

‘Viking O’Neill, First Horn and Juno Meadows, Second Flute.’

‘Don’t musicians get fired for that kind of behaviour?’

‘Not Viking,’ said Miss Priddock firmly.

‘He’s got two horrendous horn solos in Oberon and Ein Heldenleben,’ said Abby. ‘I hope he’s up to it.’

‘Viking’s up to everything,’ said Miss Priddock skittishly. ‘The platform’s through that door.’

With a shiver of excitement, Abby could see the stage set up with chairs and music-stands, and hear the glorious heady din of musicians all practising different passages from the Oberon overture.

‘And here’s your dressing-room. It’s Sir Rodney’s normally, but he vacates it for guest conductors.’

On a low marble table, Abby was touched to find a huge bunch of white hyacinths and narcissi and a note from Rodney telling her not to seduce all his orchestra before he saw her tomorrow night.

The room, befitting him, had an extremely comfortable double bed, only thinly disguised as a sofa by a few embroidered cushions, a massive bath, a buckling wine rack, a store cupboard filled with large glasses, tumblers, tins of caviar, foie gras and artichoke hearts. On the walls were photographs of Gisela and Shosty outside Flasher’s Folly, of Rodney’s late wife playing in her nightie and of Rodney and the orchestra out in the park under the turning trees on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. In the wardrobe, Abby found a set of his tails and breathed in a waft of English Fern.

‘Oh, I wish he were here.’

Miss Priddock’s face softened.

‘We all do. I’m afraid Lionel Fielding, our leader, is away guesting with some northern orchestra,’ she gave a more-fool-them sniff. ‘But his co-leader,’ the warmth returned to Miss Priddock’s voice, ‘a most delightful French Canadian, Hugo de Ginèstre, will do everything to smooth your path.’

Hugo was very smooth, as he swept in, all fire and flourish, brandishing his bow like d’Artagnan. Like d’Artagnan, too, he had a glossy moustache, a neat beard, cavalier curls just beginning to recede from a noble forehead, and big soulful dark eyes, which kept suddenly twinkling with merriment. The Musketeer image was further accentuated by a dark brown velvet jacket and a floppy white silk shirt, tucked into black cords which were, in turn, tucked into boots.

Kissing Abby’s hand and then both her cheeks, he said how honoured the RSO were to welcome such a great musician.

Marcus, who was feeling exhausted and spare-prickish, looked at his watch.

‘I’ll take what you don’t need and check in at the Old Bell,’ he said.

‘Don’t be long, I need you — ’ suddenly Abby looked vulnerable, and Marcus’s heart leapt then fell as she added — ‘to help me if I get stuck.’

‘Courage, mon enfant,’ said Hugo, as he led her into the auditorium.

Gripping the brass rail of the rostrum to disguise her shaking hands, Abby looked down at the RSO spread out before her. Many of them were paunchy, most of them pale and drawn, after a long winter of late nights, long hours’ teaching, playing other dates to make ends meet, not seeing the sun and gazing at black dots.

A handful were brown from skiing, some of the girls were young and very pretty, the men handsome, but on the whole they needed an iron over their faces and their clothes. Their gleaming instruments — gold, silver, conker-brown, burnt-umber and black — looked in much better shape. But together, they had the power of a wolf-pack. They looked at Abby curiously but coolly, poised to co-operate or gang up.

Then Abby smiled.

‘It’s great to be here with you guys. Today we’ll concentrate on Oberon and Ein Heldenleben.’

By ill luck, Oberon would start with a solo from the First Horn, who was now dressed in black jeans and a ‘Spoilt Bastard’ T-shirt, and laughing his head off. Blushing, Abby looked up at him and nodded. Viking sat there, his horn to his mouth, but not making any sound. Abby nodded again. ‘When you’re ready, First Horn.’

‘I’m ready, Maestro.’

There was another long, agonizing pause; the orchestra grinned into their instruments.

‘I think he’s waiting for you to give him the upbeat, Maestro,’ whispered Hugo.

‘Oh shit, I never thought of that.’ Abby whipped her stick up and then down and they were on their way. She was dying of nerves. But expecting one of Rodney’s bimbos (the last one had got lost in the New World), the RSO were staggered how good she was. Thanks to Marcus she was embedded in the music, giving every important cue, detecting wrong notes from the babble of sound. Musicians detest stopping and starting, and Abby luckily also had the ability to shout out or sing instructions on the wing.

Simon Painshaw, First Oboe, had carrot-coloured dreadlocks and screwed up his thin face when he played as though he was drinking vile medicine out of a straw.

‘That was fantastic,’ Abby called to him after a particularly beautiful solo, ‘but three bars after twenty-nine, you should have played A flat.’

Blushing beetroot like an unattractive winter salad at the unaccustomed praise, Simon mumbled that his part said A.

‘Then yours is a misprint.’

The musicians looked at each other in awe.

The brass players, when they got excited, made enough din to strip the rest of the paint off the foyer. Abby managed to shut them up.

‘I gather that the RSO brass section are the wonder of the West Country,’ she beamed across at them. ‘But it would be kinda fun occasionally to hear what the rest of the orchestra can do.’

The brass section shuffled their feet sulkily but they forgave Abby when she overheated, and whipped off her dark blue jersey, mistakenly taking her white T-shirt with it, to display a pair of stunning breasts.

Hugo was also a joy, playing with panache, never taking his soulful dark eyes off her, clapping his hands to shush any chatter, pleased that Abby consulted him throughout.

And the First Horn was more than adequate. After the ridiculously delayed start, Abby nearly dropped her baton, because he played with a radiance and purity completely at variance with his distinctly louche appearance. He was also the most outrageously attractive man Abby had ever seen, lounging high up at the back of the orchestra, his French horn, like the sun in his arms, matching his streaked gold hair. His dark brown eyes seemed permanently narrowed as if he were taking aim before firing one of Cupid’s arrows. He had a pale narrow face darkened by stubble, a snub nose, and his big mocking lips somehow managed to compose themselves round the mouth piece of his instrument This was an eighteenth-century horn with a pretty painted bell made of gold leaf, beaten very thin and giving it enormous range.

He’s the ghost horn player, thought Abby in wonder.

‘You do very well,’ said Hugo, as he and Abby had a cup of tea in the conductor’s room.

‘You gave me so much help,’ said Abby, ‘and the orchestra sure take their lead from you.’

‘And I from you,’ said Hugo, who was having a little bet with himself that it would be under ten seconds.

‘There are some very interesting players,’ mused Abby.

Six seconds, thought Hugo.

‘Particularly First Oboe, and — er — First Horn. A wonderful primitive sound. Why’s he called Viking?’

‘He wore an eyepatch to his audition to hide a black eye given to him by a jealous husband,’ said Hugo, gratified to have won his bet, but disappointed that Abby had reacted like all the rest.

‘When Victor, that’s his real name, first came here,’ he went on, ‘he reminded everyone of a Viking blowing a conch in a flat-bottomed boat before nipping ashore for a spot of rape and pillage.’

‘Does he,’ Abby removed her Earl Grey tea-bag, then added super-casually, ‘have a particular partner?’

‘Well, he’s slept with most of the girls in the orchestra.’ Getting up Hugo tested Rodney’s bed. ‘He only has to say, “Hallo, sweetheart,” in that peat-soft Irish voice to some pretty new cellist. Next minute she’s horizontal in the car-park.

‘Horn players,’ Hugo rearranged the cushions up one end, ‘live on the edge. First Horn and First Oboe are the riskiest instruments to play because they’re so heard and so exposed. Viking’s the hero of the orchestra, because he stands up to visiting conductors and the management.

‘The management, on the other hand, think the sun shines out of Viking’s brass’ — rising from the bed Hugo prowled round the room — ‘because he pulls in the punters. If he isn’t playing, they ask for their money back.’

Hugo opened Rodney’s food cupboard, examining tins and jars with rapt Gallic interest. Abby, who hadn’t had any breakfast, dipped a piece of shortbread in her tea.

‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘Same age as me. No disrespect to the RSO, but why hasn’t he been snapped up by one of the London orchestras, or made a fortune as a soloist?’

‘Viking’s lazy and unambitious.’ Squatting down Hugo whistled over the vintages of the wines in the rack. ‘He prefers hell-raising with his friends, they’re known as the Celtic Mafia, and playing football on Sundays. There was a mass walk-out when the management tried to introduce Sunday afternoon concerts.

‘Anyway, why should anyone want to work in London?’ asked Hugo. ‘Have you ever tried carrying a double bass on the tube? You can get to work in ten minutes here and park, and you have a salary even if it’s a pathetic one. You get a chance to rehearse before a concert and the audiences are loyal. I like it when people stop me in Rutminster High Street and say, “That was a great concert, Hugo.” The countryside is marvellous and the cottages are very cheap.’

‘You make it sound so attractive,’ said Abby wistfully.

Hugo laughed — dashing d’Artagnan again.

‘And the pickings are good. There are many, many single women in the country. Others have husbands who go to London in the week.’

‘I don’t approve of married men having affaires, said Abby primly.

‘Nor do I,’ said Hugo. ‘I’m divorced.’

Out of the window Abby could see extras running up the path to take part in Ein Heldenleben, which required a much bigger orchestra than Oberon.

‘Has Viking ever been married?’ she asked.

Hugo shook his head, too polite to snap that he’d been quizzed so often about Viking that he was thinking of making a tape.

‘But there is evidence he is taking life more seriously. Recently he left the ramshackle house on the edge of the Blackmere Lake, which he shares with the Celtic Mafia, and moved in with Juno Meadows, Second Flute, who lives,’ Hugo’s dark eyes gleamed with laughter, ‘in a converted squash court.’

‘Does she have long blond hair?’

‘That’s the one, ravissante in a doll-like way.’ Hugo tested the bed again, wondering what Abby was doing this evening. He had a terrific strike-rate with girls disappointed by Viking.

‘Juno,’ he added wickedly, ‘is so refined, she insists on eating bananas sideways.’

Abby burst out laughing.

‘And,’ continued Hugo, ‘despite being a hypochondriac, who rings in sick with a dislocated eyelash, she is very tough. The orchestra call her the Steel Elf. She refused to sleep with Viking till he moved in. He nearly went mad. Now she’s pushing him to get a better job. That’s why he was playing at Covent Garden last night. He’s already picking up her mortgage. But all the orchestra, including Viking, he’s a gambling man, are having bets as to how long it will last.

‘I ’ave to say I love the bloke, and we all forgive him, because he’s such a marvellous musician.’ Hugo looked at his watch. ‘We better get back, here endeth the first lesson.’

‘Omigod,’ said Abby appalled, ‘I forgot you had that horrendously difficult violin solo coming up. I should have left you in peace.’

‘Probably stopped me worrying,’ said Hugo philosophically.

What a pity, thought Abby, that he was at least three inches shorter than she was.

The tattered, bottle-green curtains had been pulled back as far as possible to accommodate the increased orchestra. Viking had four extra freelance horns in his section. There were two gold harps soaring like a king and a queen and an exciting array of percussion including a snare drum, which made a sinister relentless rattle, and cymbals gleaming like Ben Hur’s chariot wheels.

Irritated there were more players on stage, the orchestra were involved in their usual grumbles about over-crowding, music-stands and chairs in the wrong place, lighting and heating. Tomorrow they would have to cope with television cables and cameras. As Abby mounted the rostrum, she noticed Juno Meadows, Viking’s girlfriend, to the left, smugly aware of taking up hardly any room at all. Feeling disappointed Viking was taken — why the hell was she lusting after profligate horn players? — Abby was now in a didactic mood.

‘Ein Heldenleben,’ she told the players, who’d heard it all before, ‘means a hero’s life.’

She was interrupted by the arrival of a very fat, very pretty blonde, who sent several music-stands flying and waved frantically at Viking before plonking herself down beside a furious Steel Elf.

‘Who the hell booked Fat Rosie?’ muttered Hugo. ‘You only need thin musicians for Strauss.’

‘A hero’s life,’ went on Abby, ‘could be described as kinda autobiographical. It was written when Strauss was only thirty-four.’

‘Must have been bloody arrogant,’ said Viking, applying the Second Horn’s strawberry-flavoured lipsalve to his big mouth.

‘Just like you,’ said the Second Horn, retrieving it.

‘Quiet please.’ Hugo clapped his hands.

‘In this piece,’ continued Abby, ‘Strauss paints a savage picture of the critics who attacked his music. They are portrayed by the woodwind, scraping, squeaking and playing out of tune.’

‘Juno won’t have to try,’ sneered the First Trumpet, who had a cruel red-brick face.

‘Who said that?’ Viking was on his feet.

‘Don’t rise.’ The Second Horn pulled him back by his ‘Spoilt Bastard’ T-shirt.

‘Only joking,’ grinned the First Trumpet unrepentantly. ‘Sorry Juno.’

The orchestra, particularly the prettier girls, who entirely agreed with the First Trumpet, smirked into their music-stands.

‘Strauss also portrayed his tempestuous relationship with his wife, Pauline,’ went on Abby, ‘who was a coquette and very capricious.’

The First Trombone, who had a complexion like red rock, very blue bloodshot eyes and hair the colour of wet sand, rather like a South of France travel poster, put down his copy of Playboy.

‘You mean she was an absolute bitch,’ he said.

The orchestra giggled. Abby decided to ignore him.

‘As I am sure you all know, Pauline is portrayed by the leader of the orchestra.’ Abby smiled fondly at Hugo.

‘Hope you’re going to wear a pretty frock, Hugo, dearie,’ shouted the First Trombone.

‘And Strauss even portrays himself in the closing pages on the French horn.’ Abby smiled up at Viking, who put down Auto Express and smiled back.

‘After a terrific battle,’ concluded Abby, ‘when the brass and percussion can really play fortissimo, the work ends with the hero and his wife reconciling their differences in one of the loveliest tunes ever written, with the solo violin singing and sobbing and the solo horn — er — weaving round her like a great purring panther.’

‘Grrrrrr,’ growled Viking.

‘Show us your tits again,’ shouted the First Trombone.

Abby blushed crimson.

‘Let’s get started.’

It was like hanging onto the coat-tails of a hurricane, thought Abby, as she opened her raised arms, and whipped the orchestra to a frenzy in the battlescenes, then quietened them for the love duet. Here, she felt Hugo, although a dashing and technically faultless player, lacked passion. If only she could have taken his place, providing Viking with a player up to his weight. As she sang along with them, she realized how unendurable life would be until she could play again. She hadn’t done any physio for weeks.

Confronted by genius, however, Abby was always generous. Passing Viking on her way out as he put his horn back in a battered case, lined with crushed purple velvet, she stammered: ‘You were terrific, I’m not just bullshitting.’

‘It’s like being a racing driver or a test pilot,’ said Viking. ‘You just got to believe you’ll come out the other end.’

Hugo’s right, thought Abby, he does have the sexiest peat-soft voice in the world, and he was a good three inches taller than she was.

TWENTY-ONE

Hugo took her to the Shaven Crown for lunch. The record shop in the High Street had a display of her CDs and a coloured cardboard cut-out taken from an old photograph when she’d been all wild-haired and smouldering.

‘D’you think people will recognize me?’ she asked Hugo in alarm.

‘Of course, the explosive element is still there, the lovely body, the lovely face.’

Was her face lovely? he wondered. The nose was too big, the eyelids, the bottom lip, even the jaw too heavy and yet and yet.

‘Genuflect to our benefactress,’ he added sourly, as they passed a big department store, draped in banners saying: ‘Parker and Parker Welcomes Abigail Rosen.’

There were even windows devoted to men in tails and women in spangled evening dresses playing instruments.

‘You’ll meet Peggy Parker tomorrow night,’ said Hugo. ‘She’s as squat and brick red in the face as the Herbert Parker Hall. She loves to patronize the arts, patronize being the operative word. And she’s not very keen on Rodney because he remembers her when she was a junior in the underwear department with a tape measure hanging from her neck, and he was always nipping in to buy lingerie for his various popsies. That was before Peggy married the boss. She’s now on the RSO board and a Force to be Reckoned With, because she pumps in a lot of dosh.’

‘I hope she doesn’t force the orchestra into those awful dresses,’ shuddered Abby.

The Shaven Crown had a thatched roof kept in place by a wire hairnet and pale pink walls. Inside it was already packed with musicians and full of inglenooks, black beams, barmaids in medieval dresses and a long-suffering landlord, who wore a monk’s habit when the antics of the RSO became too much for him.

Huge orange logs in the fireplace gave the impression of having smouldered for centuries. Having installed Abby in an alcove on a black bench which said, ‘Leader’s Chair’ in gold letters, Hugo went off to order.

Abby was soon distracted by shouts of laughter. Edging along the bench, peering through a pair of hanging lutes, she saw Viking surrounded by cronies including his Second Horn who had bright blue eyes, and the First Trombone who’d acted up during the rehearsal.

‘Absolutely flagrante,’ Viking was saying.

‘What happened?’ asked the First Trombone, draining his pint of beer.

‘I had a bit of a day,’ began Viking, ‘I had lunch with Thin Rosie, went back to her place and did the business, came out and on my way to the Garden bumped into Fat Rosie, so I went back to her place and catered for her.’

‘That’s why she was looking so cheerful this morning,’ said the Second Horn, glancing up from the Independent.

‘Then I gave my considerable all to Tristan and Isolde,’ went on Viking. ‘Three hours of it. I kept falling asleep, Jesus, I was tired. I josst managed to drive home to Rutminster, fell into bed, josst dropped off, when I was woken by an imperious tap on the shoulder. Her indoors saying: “Haven’t you forgotten something?”’ Then over the howls of laughter, added, ‘That’s why I had to re-accommodate her on the glockenspiel this morning, and in barges Priddock, John Drommond and L’Appassionata.’

As Hugo crossed the bar with his bottle of red wine, Viking leant round to see who he was lunching with, and seeing Abby, without any embarrassment, raised his glass to her.

‘All the girls behind the bar want your autograph,’ said Hugo, ‘and Bernie the landlord wants a photograph taken with you.’

She still loves the recognition, he thought as he filled up their glasses.

‘I shouldn’t drink.’

‘Yes you should, to celebrate, and eat. Two steak-and-kidney pies are on the way.’

‘That’s the nucleus of the Celtic Mafia, the wild men of the orchestra,’ said Hugo, after another roar of laughter from Viking’s table.

‘That’s Blue Donovan, reading the Independent. The quiet one, a seriously good guy and usually broke because he sends so much money back to his family in Deny. Always falling asleep because he plays most nights in a jazz club.’

‘Very attractive,’ mused Abby.

‘Very. Blue covers for Viking musically and in real life. Beneath the sang-froid, Viking’s pretty neurotic. First Horn has to have iron in his soul.’

‘Oh wow, this looks great,’ cried Abby as a steak-and-kidney pie with gold pastry billowing out of the little dish, a baked potato and broccoli were put in front of her. ‘I’m starved.’

‘Can we have some mustard, Debbie?’ called out Hugo.

‘French or English?’ asked the pretty barmaid.

Abby smiled sideways under her lashes at Hugo: ‘I always prefer French.’

Feeling encouraged Hugo continued his run down on the Celtic Mafia.

‘Sitting next to Blue is the First Trombone, Dixie Douglas. A brawny fearless Glaswegian, Dixie comes from northern brass band stock — lips of steel — his light duties as a trombone player give him rather too much time to booze, letch and mischief-make. You want to watch him, Abby. He’s trouble.’

‘He already has been,’ said Abby. ‘This is so good. I shouldn’t eat the pastry, but I’m gonna.’

‘Finally, the man with a moustache, who looks like a sandy-haired Clark Gable, is Randy Hamilton, Third Trumpet, another fearless hell-raiser from a barrack-room background. Randy’s energies when not boozing and womanizing are spent improving his golf handicap and loathing the First Trumpet, Charles Jones, nicknamed “Carmine” Jones because he goes bright red during solos.

‘Carmine, you may have noticed, had a go at Juno this morning, just to wind up Viking, because he hates the Celtic Mafia, and he’s been trying to get Juno into bed ever since she joined the orchestra, and he’s livid Viking got in there first. He always moves in on any pretty girl that comes on trial. “If you sleep with me, darling, I’ll put in a good word, along with my dick.” He’s a very, very nasty piece of work.

‘Both Randy and Dixie are married with wives living in Scotland, whom they go back to sometimes at weekends. Otherwise they live in a house on the lake known as The Bordello, with Blue and until recently, Viking. That’s about it really.’

‘Thank you, Hugo,’ said Abby earnestly, half-watching a pretty waitress carrying a tray of shepherd’s pie across to the Celtic Mafia. ‘It’s crucial for conductors to learn as much as possible about their musicians.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Smiling slightly, Hugo undid an oblong pat of butter and dropped it on his potato.

‘When did you leave Canada?’ asked Abby.

Hugo started to tell her, but immediately lost Abby, because a large black collie had jumped onto the bench seat between Viking and Blue, had a red paper napkin tucked into his collar, and started wolfing his own dish of shepherd’s pie, plumey tail wagging as he carefully ate round the cooler edges first.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Abby in amazement.

‘Mr Nugent.’

‘Goddamn silly name.’

‘The fur on the top of his head was too heavy, and kept falling into a middle parting which, together with a slightly unctuous manner, gives him the appearance of a Victorian grocer, hence Mr Nugent. Viking’s had him since he was a pup.’

Filling up an oblivious Abby’s glass, Hugo edged his corduroy thigh within a millimetre of hers.

‘Nugent often sleeps in Viking’s car, which adds to the general stench and mess. He also rounds up the Celtic Mafia after hours, and always gets first place for the horn section in the tea queue during the break.’

Abby didn’t even feel Hugo’s thigh against hers, because Viking had strolled over to the bar to buy another round. She noticed his leather jacket was cut short to emphasize a high jutting bottom and long, muscular legs.

‘He’s in good shape,’ she turned to Hugo. ‘Does he work out?’

‘Only how to get his next lay. That’s how he gets his exercise.’

Mr Nugent crawled across the floor to reach his master’s heels.

‘Surely dogs aren’t allowed in here?’ exclaimed Abby.

‘They’re not, but when Bernie banned Nugent, the entire Celtic Mafia defected to the Old Bell and the bar-takings halved, so Nugent was allowed back again. The bottom line is that Juno can’t stand dogs, that’s what’s going to cause a rift between her and Viking. Talk of the Devil,’ he added as Juno walked in.

She was wearing a fluffy pale pink track suit. Her blond hair was tied back with a pale pink ribbon. Her face was delicately flushed like a wild rose to match. She couldn’t have been prettier.

Having kissed Viking on the mouth, refused a drink and asked if there was any room for a little one, she plonked herself between Blue and Viking.

‘What have you been up to?’ said Dixie snidely. ‘Aerobing or jogging, yoga-ing or yoghurt-ing or aromatheraping?’

Like the rest of the Celtic Mafia, Dixie was torn between jealousy of Viking for having pulled her, and jealousy of Juno for annexing Viking.

‘I’ve been to the gym,’ said Juno, ‘and I went to see my bank manager. He gave me a glass of sherry.’

‘Mine gives me bounced cheques,’ said Randy gloomily.

‘And I bought our tea, someone has to.’ Although Juno had a squeaky little voice like a mouse orchestra, her bluey-green eyes were as cold as distilled fiord water.

‘Nice track suit,’ said Blue the peacemaker.

‘I got it from the Children’s Department of Parker and Parker, and I got us two chops,’ said Juno, looking disapprovingly at the refilled pints of beer.

Dixie ruffled Nugent’s black fur. ‘Good thing the old boy stocked up on that shepherd’s pie.’

‘Dogs only need one meal a day,’ snapped Juno. ‘We ought to go back. I need to pick up a grapefruit and some cottage cheese.’

‘Wow, you are going to have a blow-out,’ mocked Randy.

‘Viking’s eating habits are shocking.’ Juno pursed her pretty lips, then her eyes widened as Marcus rushed through the door. Even deathly pale, black under the eyes and wheezing frantically, he was beautiful.

‘Abby darling,’ he panted, ‘I’m desperately sorry, I crashed out on my hotel bed for five minutes, next thing I knew it was a quarter to two. Are you OK?’

‘Don’t I look it?’ said Abby warmly. ‘It’s been wonderful having someone to discuss the finer points of repertoire.’

And what have I been fucking doing for the last two weeks? thought Marcus.

Feeling she had been a little harsh, Abby added to Hugo: ‘Marcus is a marvellous pianist.’

‘We could use you in the Tchaikovsky tomorrow night,’ grumbled Hugo.

‘Who’s playing?’ said Marcus.

‘Some crumpet of Rodney’s, called Anthea Hislop, known as “Hisloppy” — she’s so slapdash.’ Hugo grinned at Abby. ‘With two of you on the same night, the orchestra was going to paste “Ban the Bimbo” posters all over H.P. Hall.’ Then, seeing Abby’s expression of outrage, hurriedly added, ‘But you’re no bimbo, sweetheart. She did great today,’ he told Marcus.

‘I want to find some truly revolutionary way to do the Tchaikovsky,’ said Abby earnestly.

‘Get the horns to come in in tune at the beginning, instead of splat-two-three,’ suggested Hugo, ‘and you could try to make Hisloppy play occasionally at the same tempo as the orchestra.’

TWENTY-TWO

The run-up to the concert was distinctly fraught. Anthea Hislop turned out to be as curvacious as she was catastrophic as a pianist. This resulted in several spats with Abby which enlivened the rehearsal, but put Abby into the deepest gloom. As An thea was one of Shepherd Denston’s most successful artists, Howie Denston insisted on motoring down from London to take her, Abby, Marcus and Mike Carling, the RSO managing director out to dinner.

Marcus thought that after Rannaldini, Howie was the most dreadful man he had ever met. Allegedly the most cut-throat agent in London, he was short and plump with a white oily face, little black eyes, black hair which fell in a kiss-curl over his low forehead, and very long arms from lugging potted plants to ingratiate himself with large lady artistes. He plainly didn’t give a stuff about music and, like his father, was only turned on by the deal.

Howie’s only redeeming feature during a very sticky evening, when Abby and Anthea completely ignored each other, was that when he wasn’t jabbering into his mobile, he was talking incessantly about himself, which at least kept the conversation going.

‘I have ab-so-lute-ly no private life. I exist only for my clients. My mobile is never switched off.’

He clearly thought it was a huge concession to travel out of London, and seemed to expect wild boars covered in woad to ramraid the restaurant at any second.

Mark Carling, who hardly ate anything, left after the main course to look after a wife who had shingles. Seeing the bill was imminent, Howie jumped thankfully into a hovering limousine and steamed back to London for a breakfast meeting with his most illustrious client, Hermione Harefield.

Howie owned a five-bedroomed house on the canal at Maida Vale and earned at least four hundred thousand pounds year. He was not a day over twenty-three.

Anthea, bored because there was no-one to vamp, disappeared shortly afterwards. Whereupon Marcus lost his temper.

‘Your agent is the most revolting little man I’ve ever met. He’s pig-ignorant and he’s a bloody shirt-lifter.’

‘Marcus,’ said Abby appalled, ‘what has got into you? I’m the one who’s got the big date, right? I don’t want to hear this kinda shit. Howie’s an absolute powerhouse.’

‘Power bungalow you mean, revolting little man.’

Marcus’s attitude didn’t change when he was woken by a call from Howie at six o’clock the following morning.

‘Hi, Pretty Boy, for God’s sake, keep the Daily Mail from Abby.’

Hermione’s rage at Rannaldini marrying Helen had been exacerbated by a piece in The Scorpion about Abby staying at Helen’s house, and therefore being Rannaldini’s protegee. In revenge Hermione had given an interview to Lynda Lee-Potter. How Abby Rosen slashed her wrists because her lover filled my aeroplane seat with yellow roses.

‘Fucking Hermione,’ yelled Marcus. ‘How dare she.’

‘These dames are all the same.’

‘Hermione’s not a bit like Abby, she’s your client, you should bloody well control her.’

But Hermione was a more important client, as was Anthea. Abby might easily bomb this evening.

‘Got to go, Tiger, see you at the press conference, don’t forget, keep the Mail from Abby.’

Abby was too busy rehearsing to see the Mail, but the rest of the media pouring into Rutminster had read the piece. They had all promised not to question Abby about Christopher or her attempted suicide, but within seconds Beattie Johnson from The Scorpion was on her feet.

‘If Christopher Shepherd caused you so much grief, aren’t you getting your own back on him and men in general by becoming a conductor, so you can boss them around?’

Abby had immediately burst into tears and stormed out, leaving the place in an uproar.

At least the programme looked splendid with a lovely new picture of Abby on the front, and, even more lovely to the RSO, eighty pages of expensive advertisements for banks, cars, credit cards, clothes, jewellery and make-up.

It was also a lovely mild night. The birds were still singing, the sun had just set in an orange-and-pink glow, but to combat any symbolism, the moon was rising out of the Blackmere Woods as Abby arrived. She was gratified not to be able to see an inch of the park round the H.P. Hall for spectators with rugs and picnics.

There was an explosion of flash bulbs, police held back the cheering, excited crowds and there, to Abby’s joy and relief, was Rodney, smiling, rubicund, and waiting at the front door with his silver-and-black cummerbund embedded in his vast belly to the width of a snake belt.

‘Good evening, Maestro,’ he raised her hand to his lips. ‘Don’t let them see how frightened you are,’ he whispered. ‘You look utterly sensational.’

Abby’s short hair was brushed straight back from a lily pale face. Her only make-up was eye-liner round the hypnotic eyes, which seemed to glow like tourmaline. The Maharishi effect was heightened by midnight-blue silk trousers and a long collarless matching jacket, which buttoned up to her neck. She wore no jewellery, the only note of frivolity was the diamanté buckles twinkling on her black suede pumps. In her pocket, warding off evil, was Rupert’s silver garlic.

‘They haven’t had a turn out like this since Pavarotti in Hyde Park,’ Rodney led her into the conductor’s room. ‘Oh, darling, I’m so proud.’

‘They’ve only come to see if I’ve got two heads,’ said Abby, as Mark Carling barged in.

‘You look wonderful, Maestro. What the hell are we going to do, Rodney? We’ve got about two hundred too many Press and nowhere to seat them.’

‘Put up a few fences,’ suggested Abby, through desperately chattering teeth, ‘that’s what they like sitting on best.’

She started to run through Oberon in her head, moving her hands to the music. Viking’s opening solo followed by the strings, then that spine-chilling shimmy downwards on the flutes, then blank. She simply couldn’t remember what came next.

In panic she turned to Rodney.

‘I guess I better use a score.’

‘Darling child, it’ll come back, relax.’ He shoved a glass of champagne into her hand. ‘Take the edge off your nerves.’

Next, they were interrupted by Howie, who’d nipped for a second out of Anthea’s dressing-room.

‘Good luck, kid, you look to die for.’

‘Sorry about the press conference.’

‘Forget it. Fact that you survived heartbreak and a suicide attempt creates public sympathy.’

‘Get out, Howie,’ said Rodney icily.

There was another knock. It was Hugo, sleek and glamorous in tails. He had sent two dozen red roses, ‘To the unbimbo’, at the Old Bell, which had made Abby laugh, now he said, ‘Are you ready, beautiful Maestro?’

Abby nodded, quite unable to speak.

‘Good luck.’ Hugo sauntered out onto the platform, fiddle aloft to great cheers. He was very popular.

‘Good luck.’ Marcus gave Abby a quick kiss. He was so nervous for her, he was going to stay outside in the park.

The auditorium was fuller than in Buenos Aires. Many of the audience and all the Press were poised for the public humiliation that so often accompanies a dramatic change of career.

For a second, Abby paused, panic stricken, on the edge of the platform, then turning she saw a smiling Rodney; his pink, bald head gleaming under the naked light bulb, as he blew her a kiss. Abby touched her silver garlic, then she was on her way, sweeping into the light, to an impassioned bellow of applause, which was taken up by the crowds in the park. She shook hands with Hugo.

‘Courage, mon amie.’

Then Abby forced herself to smile and bow to the audience, listening to the manic rattle of palm on palm which was so near in sound to a firing-squad.

‘Kerist, she’s gorgeous,’ said Blue.

‘Shades of Imran Khan,’ agreed Viking, ‘or something that Edwina Mountbatten wouldn’t have been able to resist.’

Abby noticed the Steel Elf, enchanting in black silk with her blond hair piled up, and then she looked up at Viking, who smiled at her, wonderfully confident. At her nod, he put his horn to his lips.

Abby gripped her stick, the upbeat rose and fell like a wand in fairyland, and as if by magic, the notes floated out from the midgy dark green depths of Oberon’s forest. Then she remembered nothing until an avalanche of applause crashed over her, bringing her back to earth.

Throughout the overture she had been completely in charge, yet able to become the music, her beautiful body undulating like seaweed in the dark blue silk. The orchestra, noticing the cruel scar on her left wrist every time she raised her arm, realized how important the evening was to her and had played as though their lives depended on it.

The Tchaikovsky was less successful. The mood was set by the First and Second Violins who had to rise and stand back, muttering ‘Bloody concerto’ as Abby’s rostrum was shoved forward, and the Steinway was wheeled onto the centre of the stage by the stage-hands in their dinner jackets.

Once the music-stands and chairs were rearranged, Hugo struck an A on the piano and the orchestra half-heartedly pretended to re-tune. They loathed concertos. Soloists stole the limelight and, particularly in the case of pianists, obscured half the orchestra, and made conditions even more cramped.

Most of them, however, found it difficult to keep a straight face, as Anthea swept onto the platform in a kingfisher blue-and-gold brocade dress, strewn with tassels that appeared to have been tugged off the sofa in her suite at the Old Bell. She then attacked the piano with the fury of a secretary who’d been asked to stay late and type a fifteen-page report on an old Remington whose ribbon had run out. The only drama was whether one of her large blue-veined breasts would fly out of her soft furnishings and whack the principal of the second violins in the eye.

‘That is the worst pianist I’ve ever heard,’ Abby shouted as she stormed back to the conductor’s room afterwards.

‘Hush darling.’ A very sheepish Rodney put his hand over her mouth. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, I must have been drunk or very tired when I hired her; probably both.’

‘She played the whole thing in boxing gloves.’ Furiously Abby tore Rodney’s hand away.

‘None of the audience will have noticed, and those who did will have marvelled at your restraint. Listen, they’re still clapping.’

Rodney handed her a glass of champagne.

‘I don’t want a drink, I need my wits for Heldenleben. Come in.’

It was a distraught Mark Carling.

‘Thank you Maestro, you were magnificent.’ Then, turning to Rodney, he groaned, ‘That soloist was dreadful, dreadful. How could we have booked her?’

‘You must have had a tip-off,’ said Rodney blandly, ‘and you know how the Arts Council love women. Anyway, she was called back five times; she can’t have been that bad.’

‘Only because they wanted to look down her dress,’ snapped Abby. ‘Anyone with binoculars could have seen her pubes.’

It is customary, even after the most terrible performance, for the management to visit a soloist and tell them they have been wonderful. Mark, a man of integrity, was in despair.

‘What can I say to her without perjuring myself, Rodney? Particularly with that creep Howie taping every word as evidence.’

‘Follow me,’ Rodney winked at Abby. ‘Back in a tick, darling heart.’

Hair dripping with sweat, aching all over, Abby was dying for a quick shower to clear her head before the Strauss, but curious, she lingered as Rodney flung open the door of Anthea’s dressing-room, then pausing in the doorway, opened his arms.

‘Anthea, my darling,’ he boomed, ‘magnificent is not the word.’

‘Very clever,’ muttered Mark in admiration, ‘must remember that one.’ Magnificent, he tapped it into his pocket computer, is not the word.

As Anthea was temporarily tied up with Rodney, Howie felt it safe to sidle out and pay court to Abby for a second.

He was going to have his work cut out at the party later. Anthea and Hermione would want his full-time attention, so would Abby, and after hearing Oberon, Howie was determined to sign up Viking, who was a really hot man. Probably straight but Howie wouldn’t mind getting his jaw broken finding out.

The audience were flowing back now. The piano had gone, and there was nothing to distract them from Abby and a vastly enlarged orchestra. The Tchaikovsky had done her no favours with the critics. She had forty minutes to redeem herself.

Everything was going wonderfully. Ein Heldenleben was drawing to a close. The woodwind had made horribly crabby and discordant critics. The brass had been so loud and exuberant in the battlescenes they must have roused Strauss in his musicians’ heaven. The drums had thundered continuously. The four cymbals had clashed in perfect unison to mark the end of hostilities, and Don Juan’s horn call, the warrior returning from the wars in search of dalliance, had echoed joyfully through the park.

Abby’s hair was sopping, her face lurexed with sweat under the hot lights. She could see the shadow of her hands moving on the bare lectern. Somehow, she must hush the huge orchestra to make the pianissimo contrast of the love duet all the more touching. The cor anglais was now gracefully paddling like a swan. Throughout the piece, Abby had felt like a pilot, faced by a massive dashboard of dials and switches. Her aeroplane had survived the thunder and lightning of a great storm; she was now bringing its precious cargo of musicians safely in to land.

Then, as she cued in the horns, nothing happened. She tried again, nothing. She gasped in horror. Cramp gripped her right hand, which had never let her down in three years, totally immobilizing it. After a three-hour rehearsal this morning, then three-hours practising in front of the mirror, followed by all the tension of the performance, it had finally seized up.

For a few seconds, the orchestra cruised on automatic pilot. Realizing something was wrong, the cor anglais kept paddling, Hugo was poised to take over, when Abby grabbed her right elbow with her left hand, yanking it through the motions, one, two down, three to the left, short four and five back and six up to the centre, and one, two down, to re-establish the tempo.

The pain was so excruciating she thought she’d black out. But there was only one more discordant outburst from the orchestra to go as the weathercock shrieked, the wind howled, the enemies trumpeted, then the hero’s theme was back, with the horns, basses and cellos leaping nobly and majestically up the scale, and they were into the love duet.

On the big screens outside, the vast crowds could see Hugo’s sleek, dark head cocked to listen, and Viking never taking his narrowed eyes off Abby’s face, which was now shining with tears, as she cajoled them through the last few bars. And as suddenly as it had gripped her, the cramp melted away, soothed as much by the solo violin’s exquisite lullaby as by the unearthly beauty of Viking’s dark, tender reply.

Lifting both arms, she was back on course, bringing the great aeroplane down, down through the blue and landing without a bump on the runway. She felt so relieved, she almost forgot to bring in Carmine Jones and his trumpets to echo the hero’s theme fortissimo. Then a mighty crash from the wind and brass faded into the final peaceful, reassuring chord — the hero finally triumphant, bringing the H.P. Hall and the park outside yelling to their feet.

Marcus leant against the rough trunk of a big horse-chestnut tree, clutching himself; his debts, lack of recognition, loneliness, unrequited love, Rupert’s animosity, all totally forgotten. He had never heard anything so wonderful in his life, particularly as the gruesome butchering of the Tchaikovsky had nearly broken his heart. Oh darling, darling Abby, and darling St Cecilia or Polyhymnia, or Euterpe, or whoever guides the fortunes of musicians, prayed Marcus, make the same thing happen to me.

After the sixth call-back, Miss Priddock braved the stage with a huge bunch of red roses and, employing her old trick, an exhausted tearful, ecstatic Abby broke the cellophane with a stab of her baton, and handed a rose to Viking and one to Hugo who was near enough to kiss her.

The next time she returned with a beaming Rodney, who got a great roar of delighted recognition and immediately hushed the audience.

‘My lords, ladies, gentlemen, musicians, we have just heard a masterpiece about a hero overcoming his enemies, most beautifully played.’ He winked at his orchestra, triggering off a volley of ‘bravoes’.

‘But tonight we’re speaking about a heroine,’ he shushed more cheers, ‘who, in the last three years, has battled with dreadful pain, adversity, self-doubt, only to emerge tonight into a new career, as triumphant as she looks beautiful.’ One final time he raised his hand for quiet. ‘I am proud of the RSO, but the night is Abigail Rosen’s. Ladies and gentlemen, a star is reborn.’

TWENTY-THREE

As she fled back to her dressing-room, it was like the old days. People pressed themselves against the wall to let her pass, cheering her, others reached out to shake her hands, for others it was just enough to touch her for luck.

Howie was in raptures, fluttering round her, taking credit for everything. Anthea was a has-been, she didn’t even get the limo to take her back to London. Instead, it swept Abby on to a party at the sort of shabby grand house much featured in British mini-series before the stylist moves in. It belonged to Lord Leatherhead, the chairman of the orchestra.

‘Don’t get him on to bottled water, for God’s sake,’ Hugo had warned her. ‘He’s changed his family motto to “Springs Eternal”.’

As the limo clanked over a cattle-grid, Abby caught a glimpse of a llama and a couple of yaks blinking in the headlights.

Having insisted on showering and changing first, she had arrived so late that she was relieved to see Mr Nugent still there, plumey tail waving as he paid court to the house springer spaniels, who were more interested in finishing up abandoned plates of moussaka and spitting out the aubergine.

Howie was delighted that although Megagram had bankrolled the party, half the record producers in Europe seemed to have crashed it, climbing in through large Georgian windows or bribing the kitchen staff. He was less amused that half the agents in Europe had done the same thing, and were now circling Abby like jackals.

‘The fuckers, the fuckers, why didn’t Megagram put bouncers on the door? But they’re gonna have to fight to keep you, Tiger,’ he told Abby. ‘You stick with me, I’ll field any difficult questions.’

Orchestras aren’t generally invited to parties, being a large number to cater for, but tonight a representative selection of the glamorous and well-behaved had been allowed in to impress potential sponsors.

Old Henry, the oldest member of the orchestra, a rank-and-file fiddle player who could tell you whether Heifetz had started up bow or down bow in 1942, but hadn’t heard of Abby before yesterday, came over and kissed her hand.

‘It’s not often I know why I became a musician.’

Abby longed to talk to him, but he was immediately sent flying by Dame Edith Spink. Massive and monacled, with the solid waistless figure of a cooling tower, Edith promptly whipped the dark red carnation out of her dinner-jacket and presented it to Abby.

‘Bloody good show, particularly the Strauss. That Anthea needs her bottom spanking.’ Dame Edith looked as though she’d quite like to oblige. ‘But you kept your nerve; made the RSO play out of their boots, which I have to say they’ve grown much too big for. You must come and guest with my boys and girls at Cotchester. You were lucky to have Hugo. Heldenleben really sorts the leaders out from the leaders. That little squirt Lionel Fielding would have made the most ghastly cock-up.’

‘I love your work,’ stammered Abby. ‘We all OD’d on The Persuaders at college. I’d just adore to discuss conducting with you some time.’

‘Come to lunch,’ said Edith. Then proudly, almost shyly, as though she were drawing forward a boat by its splendid figure-head, she reached for the handsome, high-complexioned woman behind her. ‘Have you met my partner, Lady Baddingham?’

The Press were everywhere, snapping everyone, desperate for a new angle on Abby’s triumph.

‘Who’s the latest boyfriend?’ asked a subtly smiling journalist.

‘That has nothing to do with my conducting,’ said Abby haughtily. ‘My goal is for people to judge me as an artist, not a woman.’

‘Mm, of course,’ said the journalist, taking in Abby’s tight leather trousers, and clinging yellow body-stocking.

On cue, Anthea wiggled past, hotly pursued by Randy Hamilton.

‘Does Anthea feel the same?’

‘No-one could regard Anthea as an artist,’ snapped Abby.

Howie, meanwhile, had buttonholed Viking.

‘I work twenty-four hours a day,’ he was saying. ‘I am married to my clients, but I could find a window in my schedule to buy you lunch. How about Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons next week?’

The Celtic Mafia were getting drunk.

‘That’s the most important agent in London, you’ve just told to piss off,’ Blue reproved Viking.

‘Time is fleeting,’ said Viking, holding out his glass to a waitress. ‘And artists’ agents very long winded. D’you think Rodney’s bonked Abigail?’

‘Aye,’ said Dixie. ‘She stopped at his place long enough.’

‘Who’s the boy with dark red hair? Pretty as a picture, never takes his eyes off her.’

‘That’s Marcus Campbell-Black,’ said the Steel Elf warmly. ‘He’s lovely looking.’

‘That explains it,’ said Dixie. ‘Must be picking up her bills.’

‘Not after this evening,’ said Viking.

The musical press, determined to refute Strauss’s unflattering portrait of critics, were falling over themselves to praise both Abby’s conducting and her newly reissued records, which they’d mostly slagged off in the past as being over-emotional and teetering on sentimentality.

Now, as they poured double cream over their chocolate roulade, they were bracketing her with Jacqueline du Pré, praising her passion, her lyricism, her wondrous lack of inhibition.

Furious to be out-cleavaged by Anthea, every valley should not be exalted, Hermione had tonight done up two buttons of her yellow Chanel suit. In her pocket, however, was a promising note from Rannaldini:

Carissima,

Our love was too important to be ruined by marriage. I needed another Kitty to run my life and free me to embrace you again.

Rannaldini was little Cosmo’s father, reflected Hermione, perhaps she should forgive him. Fortunately Abby hadn’t seen the Lynda Lee-Potter piece and, in a mood of euphoria, kissed Hermione on both cheeks, and allowed them both to be photographed arm in arm by Hello!.

This didn’t stop Hermione telling the Telegraph how much she admired the RSO for giving amateurs a chance to conduct.

‘It was the same when Edward Heath did Cockaigne with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. They were so supportive to him, and ordinary folk in the audience loved feeling they could have got up and done the same thing. Music should be brought to the people, my next open-air concert… By the way d’you happen to know the name of the First Horn?’

‘OK, darling,’ shouted Rodney, teetering on a sofa to see over Abby’s ring of admirers, ‘just off to look at the conservatory.’ Climbing down, he linked arms with a voluptuous brunette wearing a lot of fuchsia-pink lipstick.

On their way, they had to go through Lord Leatherhead’s office, where, on another sofa, Rodney noticed his Third Trumpet, pleasuring a blonde, and, patting him on his broad, bobbing Glaswegian bottom, called out: ‘Keep to the left, keep to the left, you never know who you may meet coming the other way.’ Then, bending down to ascertain the identity of the blonde, added, ‘Hallo, Anthea darling, so glad my boys are taking care of you.’

‘Patrick Leatherhead ought to put some of your brass section in his wildlife park,’ said the brunette as she and Rodney reached the conservatory.

Terrified of being interrogated about his mother’s marriage by Dame Edith, Lady Baddingham, the Press or, even worse, Hermione, Marcus lurked behind a huge bamboo plant expecting the Viet Cong to attack at any moment. Peering through the leaves, he could see Abby still surrounded by admirers, the ringed moon before bad weather again. He was agonizingly aware of his own desperate poverty and Abby’s leap back to fame. She would vanish from his life now.

‘Hallo, darling boy.’ It was Rodney, wiping off fuchsia-pink lipstick. ‘Hasn’t Abby done well?’

‘Marvellously.’

‘Been a bit like rescuing a blackbird with a broken wing,’ observed Rodney. ‘However fond you get of the thing as you nurse it back to health, you’ve got to set it free, and just hope it survives and comes back.’

Marcus gave a start. The old buffer was more perceptive than he’d thought.

‘I’m away for ten days,’ added Rodney. ‘But give me a ring when I get back and come and play for me. Must go and have a word with darling Norma Major.’

Abby was dying on her feet, drunk, because she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, running only on adrenalin. The good thing about fame was you never talked to yourself at parties, the bad thing was you tended only to talk to the people who wanted to boast they’d met you, the interesting ones were usually too shy.

Peggy Parker, a non-executive director of the RSO and chairman of Parker and Parker in the High Street, had wanted to meet Abby all evening.

‘Ay must thank ye-ou, Abigail for a most enjoyable concert. Your outfit was spot-on, very tasteful and understated as befitted the occasion.’

Clad in thousands of silver sequins, weighed down by make-up, fat-nosed, little-eyed, Mrs Parker looked like a hippo who’d spent an afternoon at Estée Lauder. Pinioning Abby against a suit of armour, similar to the corsets which somehow induced curves in her massive bulk, she launched into the offensive.

‘But next time you return to Rutminster, Abigail, I hope you will feature one of our evening ge-owns on the podium. Ay even thought of creatin’ a new colour for you, a light cerise, called Podium Pink. Ay can see you in cerise.’

And I’ll see you in hell, thought Abby, fingering her silver garlic.

She felt boarded up, like the Canterville Ghost. Behind Mrs Parker, Howie was hopping from foot to foot, desperate to whisk her off to impress someone else. She would have liked to talk to the First Flute, Peter Plumpton, who had played so exquisitely in the slow movement of the Tchaikovsky, or to have picked over the concert with Hugo. But Hugo was a political animal and having chatted up all the record producers, was now deeply engrossed with Dame Edith. Anyway Abby really only wanted to talk to Viking. She could see his blond head against the peacock-blue wallpaper, but he had been besieged as she had all evening, and she was leaving first thing in the morning. And oh hell, Hugo had shaken off Dame Edith and was moving in on the left.

Then, miraculously, as if magnetized by her longing, Viking looked round, stared for a fraction longer than was polite, and then smiled. Abby felt her exhaustion and depression vanish as her cramp had during the concert. Almost imperceptibly Viking jerked his head towards a door on the right marked ‘Private’.

‘Must go to the bathroom,’ mumbled Abby. ‘Great to meet you, Mrs Parker.’

She found Viking in a library, reading a book on fly fishing, Mr Nugent stretched out on a dark green damask sofa behind him.

‘Well done,’ he said softly. ‘That’s one concert I’d have done for nothing,’ which is the greatest compliment a musician can pay.

Abby flushed. ‘You were terrific, too.’

Viking noticed how tired she looked, but how the clinging gold body-stocking brought out the blazing yellow of her eyes, and how enticingly it clung to her breasts and flat midriff, and how his hand itched to follow it inside the black leather trousers down between her legs.

‘Nigel Dempster just told me you don’t want to be regarded as a woman,’ he said mockingly.

‘Not if it means the Press only concentrating on my sex life.’

‘Sure, sure. What happened just before the love duet?’

‘Cramp, my stick hand gave out.’

Viking picked it up idly, shooting a thousand volts through her.

‘Poor little hand, probably jealous of all the attention the left one’s been getting. I’ve got a mentally handicapped sister in Doblin. She’s otterly gorgeous, but everyone makes such a foss of her, her brothers and sisters sometimes feel very neglected.’

He picked up Abby’s other hand, subtly drawing her nearer as he examined the scar.

‘How’s this one coming on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Abby snatched both hands away. ‘I can’t talk about it.’ Although she wanted to terribly.

‘Mosst have been hell watching Hugo,’ said Viking gently.

‘Hell,’ confessed Abby. ‘His technique’s to die for and he has a beautiful sound, OK? But he lacks drama, right? I kept thinking how outrageously I’d have acted up at the beginning, and then how passionately and tenderly I’d have abdicated at the end.’

‘Abby-dicated,’ murmured Viking.

Embarrassed, close to tears, she glanced up at him, noticing the dark blur of beard on the hard, lean jaw, the big laughing lips, slightly reddened and bruised from having been pressed so long against his mouthpiece (oh lucky, lucky mouthpiece), the wide nostrils of his snub nose, the fan of dark gold eyelashes, above the long, speculative eyes that were slowly searching her face.

‘Oh yes, sweetheart,’ he said softly.

Abby jumped as Mr Nugent shot off the sofa and out of the door.

‘Where’s he gone?’

‘Must’ve heard your heart beating. Nugent’s terrified of thunder.’

‘It wasn’t!’ said Abby confused and indignant. ‘How can you assume? That’s ridiculous.’ Panic made her ungracious. ‘Anyway, they say you’re just a stud.’

‘Sure, that’s why I’m stoddying you.’

He had such an untroubled smile, so utterly confident of approval. Abby wondered if the silver locket round his neck contained a picture of Juno.

‘Bad luck getting trapped by Mrs Parker,’ said Viking. ‘She puts such a strain on her corsets. Blue and I thought of getting up a petition to Save the Whalebone.’

Abby laughed, relieved yet disappointed at the shift in subject. ‘Must be kinda fun playing for the RSO,’ she said, hearing tarzan howls coming from next door.

‘Kinda,’ Viking mimicked her. ‘You don’t earn any money. The difference is if you’re a bank manager and you’re caught holding hands with a cosstomer, you’re fired. Here, if the Second Bassoon is caught bonking a fifteen year old in the H.P. car-park-’

‘Or the instrument room,’ said Abby drily.

‘Or the instrument room indeed. Rodney will just say, “Which car? Where is she? I want part of the action.”’

‘Who’s taking my name in vain? My two favourite people.’ Rodney put his arms round both their shoulders.

Hell, hell, hell, thought Abby.

‘Am I pushing myself too hard?’ Rodney frowned at himself in the looking-glass opposite.

‘What have you been up to?’ said Abby, noticing fuchsia-pink lipstick all over his shirt.

Pressed against his belly, Abby and Viking stared at each other.

‘Oh, there you are, Rodney, at last I’ve caught up with you.’

It was Mark Carling looking distraught, closely followed by Nugent licking his lips.

‘Can I pin you down on repertoire? You know we’re planning a Haydn/Stravinsky festival for next March. The Rite of Spring hasn’t been taken… I was just wondering.’

‘Darling boy, I couldn’t do the first fucking bar of that, you know I’m useless at those big orchestral thingies. Juno darling, you get prettier by the second.’

It was the Steel Elf.

‘Oh, there you are, Victor,’ said Juno coolly. ‘Get off the settee, Nugent.’

As Nugent slid off the sofa, Viking slid out of Rodney’s embrace.

‘You’re tired, sweetheart.’ His voice was gentle and solicitous.

‘A little.’

‘I’ll take you home.’

As he put an arm round Juno’s shoulders, she looked as tiny and delicate as one of Oberon’s fairies.

‘’Night, Mark. Congratulations, Maestro,’ Viking nodded at Abby. ‘See you when you get back, Rodney.’

Watching him dropping a kiss on Juno’s hair as they went out, Abby felt as though she’d been kicked in the gut.

‘Why does he wear that goddamn locket round his neck?’

‘It contains the mingled earths of Northern and Southern Ireland,’ said Rodney.

‘I wondered if I could introduce you to some of our sponsors, Abby?’ asked Mark diffidently.

The next moment, shouting, ‘Call you in the morning, Viking,’ Howie erupted into the room.

‘Where in hell did you get to?’ he reproved Abby. ‘You gotta meet Sir Larry Lockton of Lockton Records. They’ve just had a massive injection of Japanese dough.’

But everything was suddenly too much for Abby.

‘All I want you to do,’ she begged Howie tearfully, ‘is to tell Christopher I did well this evening.’ And she fled from the room.

Marcus finally tracked her down in the spare room where people had dumped their belongings. She had taken someone’s violin from its case and had it under her chin. Her right hand was wielding the bow, but the fingers of her left hand, with all the pathos of a crushed daddy-long-legs, were impotently scrabbling at the strings. She was crying helplessly.

Horrified, Marcus ran to her.

‘Abby darling, please don’t. You did brilliantly this evening.’

‘I don’t give a damn about conducting. All I want to do is play the violin again. And you can fuck off, and get out of my hair.’

‘Pissed,’ commiserated Dixie, coming out of another spare room as Marcus stumbled down the stairs. ‘My wife’s the same. Drink always gets women like that.’

Rodney took Abby back to the Old Bell.

In the morning, she discovered Marcus had gone.

TWENTY-FOUR

Abby’s reviews were sensational. MIGHTY LIKE A ROSEN, wrote the Observer, ABBY INTERNATIONAL, said the Telegraph. Even the Rutshire Butcher, a local malcontent, who strung and strung up for The Times, who had a terrifying influence over the Arts Council and who usually flayed the orchestra alive, was extraordinarily complimentary and compared Abby to Lester Piggott galvanizing a seaside donkey into winning the Derby.

The RSO grumbled that it was always the same, if a concert was bad, the orchestra got slated, if good the conductor was praised, but in reality they were euphoric, and so were the management. The takings, plus an unexpected one hundred thousand pound legacy from some local philanthropist, went a long way to wiping out the massive overdraft run up by Rodney overpaying his famous friends.

Despite the accolades, Abby felt very flat and restless after the concert. She was also ashamed of being vile to Marcus, but when she rang the Old Rectory, Mrs Edwards, in high excitement, revealed that Marcus had moved out and not left an address.

Back at H.P. Hall, however, Mark Carling had received a fax from Boris’s agent: Boris wanted to duck out of conducting the Modern Music series, because he was still wrestling with Rachel’s Requiem, which would now have to be rescheduled yet again.

As a result, Howie and Mark engaged in a little horse trading. Abby would be allowed to cut her teeth on the Modern Music series, and Howie would let the RSO have Shepherd Denston soloists and singers at a discount. Megagram were delighted. Abby’s reissued records were racing up the classical charts. The orchestra was thrilled. The Modern Music series, known as ‘Squeakygate’, and only put on to suck up to the Arts Council, was anathema, and now they could at least relieve the boredom by lusting after Abby. Abby was equally thrilled and, already getting above herself, talking to Flora in grandiose fashion about being the next Giulini.

Temporarily she decided to stay at the Old Bell, and was put in the Lord Byron Suite overlooking the river. There was a facsimile of ‘So, we’ll go no more a roving’ on the wall, and a painting of Byron in a turban, looking as dark and explosive as Abby herself.

With concerts most Saturdays, the orchestral weekend fell on Sunday and Monday. Arriving on her first Tuesday, Abby found the dark red H.P. Hall rising out of a ruff of white cherry blossom.

Standing on a flat roof, letting down rolls of different brands of lavatory paper to test which was the longest, were Miss Priddock, assorted secretaries and John Drummond the cat, who fancied himself in an Andrex ad.

This was yet another economy measure, along with stopping the orchestra using the management telephones, reducing the wattage of the light bulbs, and not replacing musicians when they resigned.

On the way to the dressing-room, Abby passed the sanctimonious and detested general manager of the orchestra, Miles Brian-Knowles, inevitably known as ‘Brown-Nose’. Miles had thatched mousy hair, a complexion like luncheon meat, caused by frequent outbreaks of acne, a permanently pursed mouth and eyes so close together they could see through the same keyhole. A born-again Christian, who held prayer meetings with selected members of the orchestra, Miles always wore shirts with a high white collar giving him an ecclesiastical look, and softly soled shoes, enabling him to spy out bad behaviour and then sneak to Peggy Parker. He’d achieved Olympic-level at sucking up to his superiors hence the nickname. He was now having a row with Viking.

‘You were not at your great-aunt’s funeral,’ he was saying in an aggrieved fluting curate’s voice. ‘I saw you with my own eyes playing on television for the London Met.’

‘Indeed you did not,’ Viking was saying indignantly. ‘That was my twin brother Danny, he’s a far finer player than me.’

‘Why wasn’t he burying your great-aunt?’

‘Danny has no sense of duty.’ Viking raised his eyes piously to heaven.

‘I do not believe you, Viking. You did not apply for a letter releasing you to play for the London Met. You could be sacked for this. And please don’t bring that dog in here.’ He glared at Mr Nugent who sat listening with his head on one side.

Viking’s spreading his wings, thought Abby, Covent Garden last month, the Festival Hall this. Juno’s pressurizing was beginning to work.

In the auditorium the orchestra were re-assembling, discussing rooms they’d wallpapered or plants they’d bought over the weekend. A violinist was cutting his nails. Two women viola players were trying to organize a dinner party.

Abby was given a desultory clap when she came in. In return she thanked the RSO for a wonderful concert, and said how happy she was to see them again.

‘Now let’s have an A, Simon,’ she asked the First Oboe.

Because it was April Fool’s Day, Simon Painshaw, with a completely straight face, played A flat.

‘Everyone transpose half a tone up,’ said Abby, who had absolute pitch and knew it was April Fool’s Day, and brought her stick down.

Caught on the hop, the orchestra burst out laughing and gave her a proper round of applause.

The morning was spent sifting through repertoire, struggling with a lot of swearing through a horror by a member of the Lesser Avant-Garde of Bulgaria, full of grunts and shrieks as though a tom-cat was being gang-raped by elderly badgers. They then moved on to an appalling serenade for solo triangle, cow bells and tom-toms with extended catawauls on the strings, written by someone called Roger Parker.

Viking immediately took out a final reminder from British Telecom and on the back drew a bucket, and wrote ‘crap’ on the side, then handed it down the row. Abby, of the same mind, called a halt after five minutes.

‘We’re not programming this garbage.’

‘Maestro,’ Dixie Douglas, the troublemaking First Trombone, put down page three of the Sun and raised a large red hand. ‘I would respectfully submit that this is a work of towering genius.’

The orchestra laughed.

Dixie then explained that the ‘garbage’ entitled ‘Eternal Triangle’, had been composed by ‘Sonny’ Parker, Peggy’s ghastly son, the RSO’s composer-in-residence.

It was hoped Mrs Parker would give a quarter of a million pounds towards the orchestra’s centenary celebrations next year.

‘A concert has been planned for her sixtieth birthday,’ concluded Dixie, ‘in the gre-ounds of her ’uge house.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Abby mutinously. ‘It’s still garbage.’

The orchestra exchanged delighted glances. A run-in between L’Appassionata and Nosy Parker had distinct possibilities.

Later Abby had a cup of coffee with Mark Carling who was beginning to meet her eyes and joke with her.

‘“Magnificent” is not the word you’d use about this office,’ he gazed round at the chaos.

Mark was a sweet man, who loved music with a passion and who had previously been very happy running an early music group in London.

‘Hugo says you did awfully well today,’ he told Abby. ‘It’s lovely to see the orchestra happy. They do tend to grumble a lot. But I believe they have a tough life for very little money. I try to think of that when they barge in here and behave horribly.

‘I envy you winning their confidence so quickly,’ he added wistfully. ‘When I go into the band room, they part like the Red Sea.’

‘I guess they think a lot of you.’ Abby tried to sound convincing.

‘They’d forgive me if I were able to give them rises,’ sighed Mark. ‘The malaise is general. Orchestras everywhere are finding that with audiences plummetting, reduced Arts Council and local government funding and sponsorship being harder to come by, there’s less and less money to spare.’

Abby was too wrapped up in the next week, digesting the arcane repertoire and imparting her findings to the orchestra, to notice how bad things were financially. Not only had Rodney overspent dreadfully, but the obscure music chosen by Mark to appease the Arts Council had not pulled in the crowds. Recordings, television and film work had dried up. There had been no more proms since Rodney fell asleep on the rostrum during Daphnis and Chloé and, for the first time in years, the orchestra had not been invited to take part in the next county’s prestigious Cotchester Festival.

On her second Tuesday morning Abby got an ecstatic letter from Rodney. The Swiss were going to name a train after him.

‘Just imagine the darling boy chugging through the mountains, we can all go for rides on him and gaze at the wild flowers.’

Running into the General Office in excitement to break the news, Abby found Miles Brian-Knowles tearing out his thatched hair. Herman, the kindly German guest conductor, known as ‘Vun Two Vun Two’, who had been standing in for Rodney for a month, was that evening doing the hellishly difficult Missa Solemnis.

The stage had already been extended, losing three hundred stall seats to accommodate the soloists and the Valkyrie might of the Rutminster Choir. And now Herman was sitting sobbing in Miles’s chair saying: ‘I am not a Nazi. If the orchestra won’t apologize I’m going home.’

Meanwhile, in the auditorium, the orchestra were playing silly buggers and singing: ‘He was Her-man, and he did us wrong.’

‘Herman’s paid five grand a concert to stand up and be electrifying,’ grumbled Viking to Blue. ‘He’s got no right to bore us and be incompetent.’

Hugo, who had another very difficult solo in the Missa, had retired to the leader’s room to practise in case Herman was coaxed back.

Stupid Kraut, thought Abby hubristically, hasn’t a clue how to handle musicians.

Even more dramatically, at lunch-time Mark Carling resigned. The Arts Council, after all he had done to please them, had slashed the RSO grant by 4 per cent, so now with inflation running at 3 per cent, they would be plunged into debt again. Having no money meant Mark couldn’t plan ahead and would have to scrap big productions like Fidelio scheduled for later in the year. The final straw was an enraged letter about the music put on to please the Arts Council.

Dear Sir,

If you continue to programme this drivel, I shall cancel my subscription.

Disasters come in threes. About to fly from Lucerne to take over the baton later in the week from poor harassed Herman, Rodney suffered a massive heart attack. The orchestra were shattered. Forgetting how Rodney had led them into debt and borrowed money off them, they only remembered his wonderful anecdotes about the famous, his kindnesses, rigging up a big screen so they could watch Wimbledon and the way he swept them all out to dinner when he was in funds.

‘Rodney avoided tax, but not attacks,’ said Viking, who’d gone very white. ‘He’ll be OK,’ he added to a distraught Abby.

‘I must go to him.’

‘I’ll drive you to the airport.’

‘Your car wouldn’t make the outskirts of Rutminster,’ said Hugo scornfully. ‘I’ll take her.’

‘Well, take him my St Christopher for luck,’ said Viking.

As the RSO were now facing a mega-crisis of cash and morale, an emergency board meeting was called. With Mark Carling gone, the executive directors included Miles Brian-Knowles, who acted ever-so humble at board meetings because he wanted Mark Carling’s job, and Harry Hopcraft, the financial director, who was within a year of retirement, and against any innovation particularly if it involved spending money.

Among the non-executive directors were the chairman, Lord Leatherhead, who was tone deaf but who had been fond of an aunt who played the tuba; Lady Chisleden, a stuffy old trout, whose reputation for virtue had been somewhat tarnished a few years ago, by rumours that she had been seen pleasuring Rannaldini’s ancient gardener during the famous Valhalla orgy; Peggy Parker, who referred to the orchestra as ‘we’ and who never missed a concert; various bankers, brewers and building society supremos (the three Bs which keep orchestras going), and Canon Airlie, a Handel freak, known as the unloose canon because like Mrs Parker, he was always inveighing against hooliganism.

Finally, there were two directors from the orchestra: Simon Painshaw, Principal Oboe, who was a walking Grove’s Dictionary if given the chance, and the Principal Viola, Dennis Strickland, known as ‘El Creepo’, because he was always brushing against breasts.

These directorships, which lasted two years were supposed to be chosen from the best people to fight the orchestra’s corner. But such was the distrust of management, that Simon and El Creepo had been the only people last time to put their names forward.

The boardroom itself looked across to the russet spires and roofs of Rutminster. The ruby blur on the horse-chestnuts in the park was turning buff as the green leaves pushed out of each sticky bud. The spring sunshine, however, cruelly highlighted the faded dusty brown velvet curtains with the hems coming down, the worn blue carpet, the peeling blue-and-fawn wallpaper, the Paisley design concealing the damp patches. On the walls were also an oil of Herbert Parker, who looked like Bach after a short back and sides, an aerial view of Rutminster showing the concert hall, some framed programmes from the early days, and a photograph of a drooling Peggy Parker shaking hands with the Duchess of Kent. The room however, was dominated by Rodney’s portrait over the fireplace. Ruskin Spear had brilliantly captured his Falstaffian merriment. Any moment, you expected him to wink.

Canon Airlie opened the meeting with prayers for his recovery. Miles really shut his eyes and said the loudest Amen.

Miss Priddock, who was taking the minutes, burst into tears and was comforted by a swig of brandy from one of the brewers’ miniatures. Lord Leatherhead then suggested they offer Abby Rodney’s job.

‘She’s got a high profile, she’ll pull in the sponsors and the advertisers. She’ll attract fat record contracts — we were all impressed by the way Megagram chipped in — and she’s played with many of the top conductors, so she’ll pull in the big names.’

‘She’s also a fine musician,’ chipped in Lady Chisleden. ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the ill, but Rodney hated learning new pieces. Abby will bring in a younger audience. Ours is getting a bit hoary.’

‘And the orchestra like her,’ said Harry Hopcraft, the financial director. ‘I haven’t heard such laughter coming from rehearsals since Rodney fell off the rostrum. And she’s cheap.’

Howie Denston (who’d been on the telephone before Rodney reached intensive care) had offered most reasonable terms.

‘Look how well Dame Edith has done at Cotchester,’ said Peggy Parker. ‘The English have always thrived with a woman at the helm. Think of Boudicca, Elizabeth I, Victoria-’ She waited expectantly.

Miles didn’t fail her.

‘And of yourself, heading your great Parker and Parker empire.’

Peggy Parker bowed graciously.

‘With respect though, Mr Chairman,’ continued Miles in his fluting voice, ‘I feel Abigail Rosen is too young and inexperienced.’

El Creepo, who liked Abby because she was beautiful and had praised his solos, said that Simon Rattle and Toscanini had taken over when they were even younger.

‘Auditioning’ll take months,’ urged Harry Hopcraft. ‘And think of the air fares and the hotel bills.’

‘We ought to consider the alternatives,’ persisted Miles. ‘What about Olaf?’

‘Talks far too much in rehearsals and bores the orchestra,’ said Simon, whose solos Abby had also praised.

‘What about Vladimir?’

‘Liable to turn nasty,’ said El Creepo. ‘Uses us to familiarize himself with obscure repertoire, then rushes off to record it with other orchestras.’

‘What about Hans?’ asked Lady Chisleden. ‘Such a charmer.’

‘Said he wanted to live in the area and get to know us then pushed off on the first plane back to Switzerland after every concert, and he’s always drunk on the rostrum.’

‘Sheraton’s miserable in Germany,’ added Simon, ‘but it would take six months to extricate him. Rannaldini’s restless in New York, but we could never afford him and Boris Levitsky.’

‘Is dishy,’ said Lady Chisleden eagerly.

‘But totally unreliable,’ snapped Peggy Parker.

‘None of them is as famous as Abby,’ said Lord Leatherhead. ‘We must have someone who can haul audiences away from the television.’

Miles cracked his knuckles.

‘What about Ambrose?’ he suggested in desperation.

Everyone shuddered. Ambrose, the principal guest conductor, known as the ‘Fat Controller’, was a bitchy old queen who’d been guesting for three months in San Fransisco. (‘Coals to Newcastle,’ said Viking.)

‘Ambrose is bound to block Abby’s appointment when he returns,’ said Lady Chisleden. ‘He loathes women.’

‘All the more important to engage Abigail at once,’ insisted Peggy Parker, envisaging a whole series of concerts in which Abby dazzled in a different Parker and Parker evening ge-own, and blissfully unaware of Abby’s comments about her son’s composition.

‘Don’t you think we should consult the orchestra?’ said Simon Painshaw, examining his red dreadlocks for split ends.

‘Heavens no,’ said Harry Hopcroft. ‘They’ll disagree on principle.’

Miles’s was the only dissenting voice: he was even more fed up when, over Earl Grey and digestive biscuits, the board showed no inclination to appoint him as managing director.

Everyone agreed with Lord Leatherhead that they needed a new broom with a City background, who could capitalize on Abby’s marketability.

‘He must be musical,’ urged Lady Chisleden.

‘And able to give the orchestra spiritual guidance,’ urged Canon Airlie.

Lord Leatherhead said he and one of the bankers had someone in mind.

‘Will you approach him then, my Lord,’ said Peggy Parker.

And I’ll never suck up to you again, you old monster, thought Miles furiously.

Glancing out of the window, Lord Leatherhead saw Abby, back from Lucerne, leaping out of a taxi, running up the path, as lithe and graceful as the white cherry blossom tossing in the April breeze. As a treat, the board decided to call her in and offer her the job.

‘I’d like to hear how Rodney is, too,’ said Lady Chisleden.

There was a rip in Abby’s jeans, a smudge on her forehead and her dark curls stood on end.

She had had a frightening and exhausting three days and had only come back because she had exchanged a few comforting words with Rodney, who had urged her to carry on with Squeakygate.

‘He was so darling,’ she said, as Miss Priddock bustled in with a fresh pot of tea. ‘He sent you all his love, particularly you, Miss Priddock, and said please don’t worry. He said he’d get much better much quicker if they added some Krug to his drip, and at one moment, he looked round at all the tubes,’ Abby gave a sob, ‘and then said, “Darling girl, I’m not frightened of death, it’s just getting there that worries me”’

When they offered her the job, she burst into tears for a second time, and hugged everyone including El Creepo. Her delight and her impassioned promise that she would work her heart out for Rodney’s orchestra, until he could take over again, touched them all.

‘The problem with modern orchestras,’ she went on, ‘is that conductors are so busy jetting round the world, they never have time to learn the repertoire or get to know the orchestra. I want to live in Rutminster and become part of the community. Thank you all for giving me this wonderful chance. Can I sign the contract as soon as possible, in case you change your minds?’

‘Who is going to tell the orchestra?’ asked El Creepo nervously, after she’d gone.

‘Oh, tell them after the contract’s signed,’ said Harry Hopcroft. ‘We don’t want them putting their oar in.’

TWENTY-FIVE

Having been nearly flattened by musicians charging out of rehearsal to the Shaven Crown, Abby floated off to ring Howie, who gave her a bollocking for over-enthusiasm.

‘If you hadn’t rolled over we could have screwed another grand a concert out of them. I’m only going to draw up the contract for a year, right? To see how you get on.’

Privately he was convinced the RSO would have folded long before then.

As everyone had gone home, Abby stole into the auditorium which seemed filled with the ghosts of former players. Herbert Parker’s haberdasher’s gold crest of interwoven thimbles, needles and cotton reels glittered on the faded dark green velvet curtains. Even the gold cherubs decorating the fronts of the boxes seemed to be tooting their long trumpets to welcome her.

‘My band, my own band,’ sang Abby, waltzing down the aisle in ecstasy. ‘I’m gonna make you the greatest band in the world.’

Leaping onto the rostrum, she was singing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: ‘De, de, de, dum, de, de, de, dum, de, de, de, dum’, at the top of her voice and conducting with wild flourishes, when someone started playing the First Violin part. Whipping round, Abby nearly died of embarrassment to find Hugo who’d been working late.

‘How was Rodney? Better it would seem.’

‘I figure he’ll pull through,’ Abby leapt down from the rostrum, ‘he’s determined to ride in his new train. Thank you so much for driving me to the airport.’

Something’s happened to her, she’s glowing, thought Hugo in disquiet, and it’s nothing to do with Rodney. God, he hoped Viking hadn’t got there first.

‘You look like the cat that’s got the cream. You must be in love.’

‘Oh I am,’ Abby whirled round the platform.

Bugger Viking, thought Hugo.

‘In love with a whole big orchestra, right? Promise, promise you won’t tell anyone.’

‘Sure, sure.’

‘You are looking,’ Abby paused in mid-whirl, nearly falling over, ‘at your new boss.’

‘What!’ No cymbal crash could have been louder.

‘The Board’s just appointed me musical director.’

Hugo was enchanted, particularly because it had nothing to do with Viking, and suggested dinner at a discreet out-of-town restaurant, the Heavenly Host, in Paradise.

The sunny day had turned into a beautiful evening with the first green leaves spotlit by the falling sun against a navy-blue sky. Lambs were racing in the fields, cricketers in sweaters were practising in the nets. Hugo pointed out various pretty thatched cottages belonging to members of the orchestra, including his own, which was smothered in clematis montana with a front garden filled with grape hyacinths and primroses.

‘This is where you should get a place. I come home in the evening, see cows in the fields, and stop thinking “Bloody orchestra”. We can have a night-cap there later if you’re not too tired.’

‘I’d just love to,’ said Abby.

Hugo was such a gentleman, he’d never try anything unless she wanted it. But, looking at his beautifully manicured hands on the wheel and his powerful thighs in those lemon cords, she thought perhaps she did.

Hugo would be the perfect man, kind, sophisticated, utterly honourable, with whom to celebrate the end of three years’ celibacy.

‘That’s Rannaldini’s house,’ Hugo halted, putting a caressing hand round her left shoulder and pulling her across the same powerful thighs, so that out of the side-window, she could see Valhalla, towering and tasselled with emerald-green larches.

‘How can he leave such a fantastic place to work in New York?’

As they arrived at the restaurant, Hugo pointed out a pilgrimage of frogs laboriously crawling across Paradise High Street on their way to the River Fleet.

‘Just like the RSO, no matter who they’re bonking, how much they’ve drunk, whatever mischief they’re up to, oversleeping or missing the bus, some inner clock tells them the time and somehow they always make the gig.’

‘That’s so dear,’ said Abby in a choked voice. ‘And this is so gorgeous,’ she cried as they went into the restaurant.

Angels reclining on clouds and twanging gold harps had been painted on the walls. Pretty waitresses, in flowing white robes and haloes, handed out scrolls instead of menus. Vases of lilies stood on each celestial blue table.

Being mid-week, the restaurant was pretty empty. Hugo felt free to talk and, over a celebratory bottle of Moët, he told Abby about the Berlin Wall existing between the musicians and the management, who were known as the ‘Fourth Reich’.

‘The management think the orchestra are a bunch of capricious, male-dominated, backbiting, money-grubbing hooligans. The orchestra think management is inefficient, lazy, uppity, tone deaf, overpaid and spends its time drinking coffee and taking three-hour lunches.’

The candlelight gave a warmth to Hugo’s sallow skin, his dark eyes gleamed with laughter.

‘The only time the orchestra venture onto the top floor is to ask for days off or more money, or make private telephone calls. In fact the orchestra’s attitude to management,’ Hugo picked up the menu, ‘was summed up this afternoon by the chairman of the Players’ Committee telling the Press about Mark Carling’s resignation.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Abby fascinated.

‘He said: “I feel great joy and sadness. Joy that Mr Carling is leaving, but sadness that it won’t be for another three months.”’

‘That’s obnoxious,’ Abby was shocked rigid.

‘And that,’ sighed Hugo, ‘after all Mark’s done for the orchestra. Poor guy was so upset, he’s walked out, and we’ll have to put up with that dickhead Miles Brown-Nose until they appoint another managing director.

‘But with an average RSO salary of fifteen thousand pounds and most of them forced to take teaching jobs and freelance work to pay the mortgage,’ said Hugo fairly, ‘it’s not surprising they’re tired, tetchy and demoralized.

‘They’re all spoilt,’ he went on. ‘They’ve been the best player in their school, in the local youth orchestra, probably at college. Parental hopes centred on them, so on the one hand you’re dealing with eighty-six Pavarottis who all think they can play the concerto better than the soloist. On the other hand they’ve been soured by being told how to play Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony every week by a different idiot, who earns more in an evening than they all do put together in a month. The hall is terrible,’ he went on, ‘a blackbird on the first day of spring would sound dire in there, and there’s no money to repair it.’

‘Are you ready to order, Monsieur de Ginèstre?’ an angelic waitress put down a plate of little pies, filled with salmon mousse and scrambled eggs, and topped up Abby’s glass.

Hugo, who had hardly touched his, because he had been talking so much, ordered garlic mushrooms for himself and Abby as a first course. After a lot of French chat du jour with the manager, they agreed on boeuf bourguignonne, new potatoes and haricot verts as a main course.

‘Musicians love food,’ said Hugo. ‘The best thing about a concert is eating afterwards. Tomorrow night,’ he put a leisurely hand on Abby’s jeaned thigh, ‘I will cook for you.’

Abby, who hadn’t eaten all day, was trying not to wolf all the little pies.

‘Go on about the orchestra, I guess I better know the worst.’

‘The main problem,’ Hugo was studying the wine list with intensity, ‘is that there isn’t room in the area for two orchestras. And the Arts Council are dying to close one down. There’s only fifty miles between us and the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra, who are smaller and much better run by Dame Edith Spink. And they’ve got the backing of Venturer Television. As a result they’re pinching more and more of our dates, and more of our sponsors.

‘They specialize in early music when they are not programming Dame Edith’s junk. They’ve done fifteen CDs in the last seven months, and they’ve got some really good musicians. The RSO used to be a terrific orchestra, specializing in heavyweight nineteenth-century music.’

‘And will be again,’ interrupted Abby firmly. ‘But first I gotta fire some of the musicians. Juno Meadows for a start, she’s awful, and there are some dreadful string players, and an old boy in Viking’s section, who should have been pensioned off years ago, as should that old bass player, with the hearing-aid, for Christ’s sake. And the First Clarinet’s a basket case.’

‘His wife keeps threatening to leave him, normally he’s a good player,’ protested Hugo.

She doesn’t miss a trick, he thought.

‘Omigod,’ Abby gave a moan of greed as a huge cloud-shaped plate of mushrooms, dripping in garlic butter and parsley, was placed on the blue table-cloth for them to share.

‘Tuck in,’ said Hugo.

Abby, however, was reluctant to be distracted. Dunking a piece of bread in the butter, she said: ‘Most of that lot will have to go.’

‘Well, that’s a good thing,’ Hugo popped a mushroom into her mouth, ‘because there’ll probably be a mass exodus once they hear you’ve been appointed. Then you can slot in your own people.’

‘Will they be very hostile?’ said Abby in alarm.

‘They won’t like working for a woman.’

‘But there are lots of women in the orchestra.’

‘That’s different, they’re in subordinate positions. Mary Melville, Principal Second Violin and Clarissa, Principal Cello, are the only section leaders.’

‘But they’ve been darling, so far,’ Abby felt champagne, garlic mushrooms and too many pies churning unpleasantly round and took a slug of water.

‘That’s because no-one takes Squeakygate seriously,’ confessed Hugo. ‘They loved Rodney, but they still winged about him. Now he’s gone, they’ll canonize him. Orchestras see the fronts of conductors so they only fall in love with their departing backs.

‘You must be tough with them, Abby, or they’ll walk all over you, and you must keep your distance. You’re a very attractive woman, but once one of them gets you into bed, the rest will be wildly jealous and lose any respect for you. And don’t think they’ll keep it a secret. You can’t be a member of the Celtic Mafia unless you report back on every conquest.’

Sidling down the heavenly blue velvet banquette, Hugo slid an arm round Abby, and pressed his lips to hers.

Abby was so startled, she kissed him back, a glorious exchange of garlic butter: her first French French kiss. Sitting down, Hugo was the same height as her.

‘I can’t wait to show you my cottage,’ he whispered.

‘I haven’t showered since this morning,’ stammered Abby, then kicked herself for being so gauche. Frenchmen were supposed to relish unwashed women, like camembert.

‘I’ve just had a Jacuzzi installed,’ Hugo seemed to read her mind.

‘I thought you said I mustn’t screw any members of the orchestra,’ chided Abby, who was nevertheless getting wildy excited.

‘I did,’ Hugo’s eyes were no longer soulful, but smiling wickedly — d’Artagnan of the flashing rapier again.

‘Quite frankly I can’t stand playing second fiddle to Lionel Fielding any more, he’s back the day after tomorrow and he’s such a wanker, so I’m off to lead the CCO. Edith and I were bashing out the nuts and bolts after your début concert. I gave my notice in this afternoon,’ he added triumphantly. ‘I’m no longer a member of your orchestra, my darling, so there’s nothing to keep us apart.’

And he lunged back into the attack.

Abby was so enraged that her great ally was abandoning her in her hour of need, that she leapt to her feet, and emptied the plate of mushrooms and butter all over Hugo’s yellow cords.

Then she shouted across to the manager: ‘If you bring in the boeuf bourguignonne, I’ll empty that over the son-of-a-bitch, too.’

And she stalked out.

TWENTY-SIX

Abby’s spirits were scarcely raised the following morning when she went into the general office to study the wall chart of future engagements. It was like a wallflower’s dance programme. There should have been bookings two years ahead. The RSO hardly knew what they were doing in the autumn.

A moment later, Miss Priddock rushed in brandishing the Rutminster Echo as if there’d been a death in the family.

RUTMINSTER ABBY, shrieked the huge headline.

Someone, probably Hugo, incensed by the destruction of his yellow cords, had leaked the story of her appointment.

‘Some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them,’ wrote the Rutshire Butcher, arguing that Abby was an example of the John Major Syndrome. ‘You push someone young and inexperienced into a position of huge responsibility and then you pray like hell,’ which didn’t make Abby any happier.

The orchestra, with predictable artistic caprice, were absolutely livid. They had not been consulted. Abby hadn’t worked her way up as a conductor. She had no track record.

‘It’s a nice day, let’s go on strike,’ said Randy Hamilton, who’d had a big win on the Grand National and wanted to play golf with Dixie.

The rest of the orchestra were too strapped for cash to strike and plotted rebellion. It had been a lark having Abby poncing around with Squeakygate, but there was no way they were having her as musical director, planning the repertoire and taking over all Rodney’s concerts. They vowed to break her in a month.

‘Poor Princesse Lointaine,’ sighed Viking, when she gave him back his St Christopher. ‘The honeymoon’s over before you even had time for a wedding night.’

Instantly the orchestra started making her life a misery, turning rehearsals into the worst kind of blackboard jungle, barracking her, anwering back, carrying on when she told them to stop, passing notes, farting, burping and in her first concert as musical director, totally ignoring her and playing the Dvŏrák Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony exactly as they had always played them. Abby felt as effectual as a tiny child trying to flag down a passing helicopter.

At this initial concert, she first fully appreciated the deficiencies of the hall. The acoustics were frightful. The whole building trembled every time the express to Paddington went by. Every fire engine, back-firing car and tolling cathedral clock could be heard. Rain poured through the roof. Now she realized why they’d installed portaloos for her début concert. Only the most deafening tutti could drown the clanking of chains in the Ladies.

Nor did Abby get any support from Lionel Fielding, the leader, and Hugo’s reason for leaving, when he returned. He should have acted as a buffer between her and the orchestra, but accustomed to being a big fish and finding a far greater violinist had been appointed over him, he flew back in a rage that he had not been consulted.

Lionel was a very vain man, whose romantic good looks were marred by a petulant expression. Although he spent more time blow-drying his flowing ebony locks in the leader’s room than practising his solos, he wasn’t above launching into a Paganini Caprice before concerts just to unnerve less experienced string players.

He loved all the little marks of respect owed a leader, musicians standing up for him, being asked to dinner with the board and to parties after concerts. And since he had been guesting with a northern orchestra, who had a very lush leader’s room, with an en suite bathroom, a sofa, fridge and coffee machine, he was very discontented with the chair in a large cupboard provided by the RSO, and determined to replace it with something grander.

Known as the ‘Incredible Sulk’ because of his black moods, Lionel had a sweet wife, Miriam, who used to play Second Oboe. Lionel, however, had insisted she return home to look after their three children — ‘I will not have latch-key kids’ — leaving him free to pursue the Second Clarinet, Hilary Lloyd.

Nicknamed the ‘Swan of Purley’, because she was the leader’s mistress, Hilary Lloyd was an organizing bitch in her late twenties, who ran the RSO conker competition and terrorized any young pretty girl in the orchestra, by raising her eyebrows and sighing every time they played a wrong note. She also put in industrial earplugs in protest against the din of the brass section and to unnerve her section leader, a gentle old boy called Eldred whose job she wanted.

A school sneak, Hilary never forgot a birthday nor an insult. The players tended to suck up to her because as leader’s pet, she could make life very difficult, particularly in a time of recession. She had a very inflated idea of herself and would suddenly yell out, ‘Lionel, the First Violins ought to be more pianissimo,’ in the middle of a rehearsal, which was completely out of order.

Hilary’s best friend was ostensibly Juno Meadows, but they enjoyed a spiky relationship, Hilary envying Juno’s fragile beauty and her acquisition of Viking, and Juno envious of Hilary’s minor public-school background and her acquisition of Lionel, who as leader, outranked Viking. Much of their conversation revolved round whether Juno would reform Viking, or Lionel leave Miriam. Hilary prided herself on being better at sex, cooking and cherishing than Miriam. She would set her alarm for 3 a.m. so she could listen to Lionel playing the Kreutzer Sonata on the World Service.

Hilary had a cottage outside Rutminster which Lionel visited on the way to and from work, but unlike Viking he didn’t pay the mortgage, having a large one of his own already. As a result Hilary was very tight with money, never buying a drink and always taking the manilla envelope round to collect for leaving presents, so no-one would realize she hadn’t put in any money.

The departing Hugo had been much-loved, and Hilary collected enough money to buy him some new yellow cords, a pair of waterproof trousers and a symbolic gym slip and hockey stick, because he was defecting to join the Headmistress’s team in Cotchester.

His leaving party, in Close Encounters Wine Bar near the cathedral, was extremely wild. Viking and Dixie brought the house down with a touching rendition of ‘The Lost Cords’. Canon Airlie, taking a midnight stroll with his Welsh terrier, Trigger, was appalled to see a shrieking schoolgirl with only a hockey stick for protection being chased across the Close by the Celtic Mafia and a large barking black dog. The schoolgirl was then stripped of her gym slip and thrown into the River Fleet. Rushing to her rescue, the Canon nearly suffered a coronary on being confronted by a thick hairy chest and worse, as Hugo emerged laughing uproariously, bellowing French expletives, from the foam.

Abby had not been invited to the party — ‘You’re management now, duckie’ — but heard the sounds of revelry as she leant wistfully out of the Lord Byron Suite, breathing in the smell of white lilac and newly mown grass, and praying that one day she would be accepted.

But no-one could accuse Abby of cowardice. Her first job was to sort out the RSO.

‘I know you’re all desperately underpaid and hungover,’ she told them with a smile the following morning.

The orchestra, green to the gills, did not smile back.

‘And I’m going to push for more bucks for you,’ went on Abby. ‘But not until you play better. You’ve got sloppy and lazy and there are too many players not pulling their weight: faking or being protected by their colleagues.’

She then produced the bombshell that she wanted the entire orchestra to re-audition behind a screen and in front of a listening panel in the American fashion.

‘So no bias against women, foreigners, young or old, black or white, can creep in. This won’t mean mass sackings, we can’t afford it.’ Abby smiled again at the orchestra who glared back stonily. ‘I just want to locate the bad apples.’

‘We could start with you,’ shouted the bullying, brickred faced First Trumpet, Carmine Jones.

Miles Brian-Knowles, the general manager, who was already cross with Abby because she claimed she was too busy to meet and charm any sponsors, was absolutely furious.

‘You can’t sack anyone, it’s not just the money, the unions won’t let us, and any musician fed up with working in London is far too expensive.’

The board, however, supported Abby, as did one of her few fans, the stage manager, Tony Charlton, known as ‘Charlton Handsome’. Charlton was a larky boy, who looked almost as good in jeans as Viking, and resented the fact that the Celtic Mafia creamed off the prettiest groupies after concerts.

‘They’re a lot of prima donnas, Abby, you stick to your guns,’ he encouraged her as he rehung the dusty brown velvet curtains across the board room to provide a screen, and turned the big mahogany table sideways. He then lined up chairs on the far side for a listening panel, which would consist of Abby, Miles, relevant section leaders when they weren’t auditioning themselves, and Miss Priddock with a list of numbers for each member of the orchestra to be ticked off ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ after they’d played.

Most stretched of all by the event was Nicholas Digby, the incredibly harassed orchestral manager. Nicholas had an anguished face, ginger hair falling like Saluki’s ears on either side of a very bald cranium and looked rather like Mr Pinch in Martin Chuzzlewit. One of his many jobs, along with providing complimentary tickets, and seeing the soloists’ dressing-rooms were all right, was getting the correct number of musicians on and off the stage for every concert. He had a nervous breakdown every winter finding extras when the RSO were laid low with flu.

He now had the thankless task of feeding members of the orchestra one by one in to the board room and attempting to preserve their anonymity by stopping them speaking.

‘Leave off your aftershave, and stump in in Doc Martens,’ Dixie advised Randy. ‘And they’ll assume you’re a woman and pass you automatically.’

Sections varied in size in the RSO. Lionel, as well as leading the orchestra, presided over thirteen first violins. Peter Plumpton, First Flute, on the other hand, only had the Steel Elf and an occasional piccolo player to boss. Section leaders, or principals as they were known, were responsible for the various problems within the section, stopping personality clashes, deciding who should sit where and next to whom, generally improving the sound.

They also tended to shield bad players. Barry, the Principal Bass, a grey-haired giant with a gypsy’s face, who came from a rock band, had an old boy, known as ‘El Squeako’, in his section. El Squeako, who relied on his double bass to hold him up, had a hearing-aid which frequently let off eldritch squeaks during the most intimate pianissimo, reducing the entire orchestra to hysterical giggles. Somehow El Squeako had to be nursed past the listening panel.

It was a matter of pride for Viking to get all his section through. His only worry was Old Cyril, the Fourth Horn, whose lips and teeth had gone so he couldn’t centre the notes any more, and who drank too much out of nerves and despair.

Once a great player and friend of Dennis Brain, Old Cyril always wore a tie and a jacket to rehearsals, sat up straight, was polite to everyone, loved his garden and Miss Priddock for the thirty years he had been with the orchestra.

Viking knew he ought to take the old boy aside and tell him he was holding the section back, but Cyril had looked after Viking when he joined the orchestra eight years ago. He would never survive if he were fired and had to eke out an existence teaching, and Viking wasn’t going to dump him now. Cyril, however, hadn’t helped himself by downing beer after beer in the Shaven Crown on the day of the auditions.

By lunch-time, Abby had reached screaming pitch. Why in hell had she started the beastly thing? If she heard another Mozart concerto murdered, she’d go ballistic. She’d forgotten, too, how terrifying auditions were for players. With throats constricting, fingers stiffening, tongues tying, and breath shortening to nothing, it was worse than ironing someone else’s silk shirt.

Number Thirty-Nine, who’d just come in, played exquisitely for three minutes before launching into a flurry of wrong notes and bursting into tears.

Appalled, Abby jumped up, pushing the brown velvet curtains apart, to find Little Jenny, the round-faced baby of the orchestra who sat at the back of the Second Violins.

‘You did great,’ Abby put her arm round Jenny’s heaving shoulders. ‘We all thought you were a far more experienced player. Of course you’re through. Go and have a large drink.’

‘It was your idea to audition everyone,’ said Lionel nastily as Abby flopped back into her chair.

‘We better all go to lunch and cool down,’ said Miles primly.

Abby, who was not remotely hungry, went in search of Jenny’s section leader, Mary Melville, known as ‘Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin’, because she was absolutely bats about her baby son. Abby wanted to tell Mary how good Jenny had been and that she ought to play at a desk nearer the front.

The band room acted as a sitting-room where musicians dumped their instruments, ate their packed lunches and relaxed when they weren’t needed in a piece of music. As well as low sofas, chairs and tables, there was a ping-pong table, a notice-board and a small bar at the far end, providing bacon sandwiches, hot dogs and soft drinks, tea and coffee.

The room fell silent as Abby entered.

‘I’m looking for Mary.’

‘Gone shopping,’ said Clarissa, Principal Cello, who apologized for speaking with her mouth full and, to everyone else’s horror, invited a pathetically grateful Abby to join her for a cup of coffee.

Clarissa, like Charlton Handsome, was another of Abby’s supporters. She admired her as a great player and, as the mother of three with a husband out of work, Clarissa was always too worried about paying the mortgage and the school fees and scurrying from teaching jobs to cabal and bitch with the rest of the orchestra.

Slumping down on one of the uncomfortable olive-green sofas, trying to ignore the hostility all around, Abby was amazed to see Viking, who normally went to the Shaven Crown at lunch-time with the Celtic Mafia, unenthusiastically eating cottage cheese between two pieces of Ryvita.

Beside him the Steel Elf was looking at colour charts.

‘This room is terrible,’ she glared up at walls painted a vile shade of hen’s diarrhoea green. ‘Why don’t we all pitch in and rag and drag it a nice peach one weekend?’

‘Needs some decent pictures,’ said Viking, not looking up from Viz.

‘Perhaps we should commission a portrait of our new musical director,’ said Hilary, who had her back to Abby.

‘Won’t be here long enough,’ said Juno bitchily.

‘Ignore them,’ whispered Clarissa, returning from the bar with two cups of coffee.

‘Thanks,’ whispered back Abby. ‘What’s Viking doing here?’

‘Dixie has a tenner on at 100-1 that Juno will kick Viking out before the end of April,’ murmured Clarissa, picking up the black tights she was darning, ‘so it’s in his interest to lead Viking astray.

‘On Sunday, Viking was supposed to be putting up shelves. Dixie lured him out to the pub and Viking didn’t get back till midnight. Madam was hopping,’ Clarissa lowered her voice even further, ‘and has refused to sleep with Viking unless he stops drinking and carousing, and he has.’

‘My God, for how long?’

‘About forty-eight hours.’

Viking, meanwhile, was trying to look as though he was enjoying cauliflower florets and Vegemite sandwiches.

‘What did you put in for Nugent?’

‘Nothing, I keep saying dogs should only be fed once a day. With the warmer weather, he can soon sleep outside. What d’you think of that colour for our bedroom, Victor?’

‘Onspeakable. Nugent will not sleep outside,’ he handed Nugent half his sandwich, which Nugent promptly spat out, regarding it as no substitute for his own shepherd’s pie at the pub.

‘Any chocolate biscuits?’ asked Viking.

Juno cut a grapefruit in half and handed one part to Viking with a plastic spoon and a napkin. ‘Here’s your dessert.’

‘Some achieve grapefruit, some have grapefruit thrust upon them,’ sighed Viking. ‘Oh Christ.’

Old Cyril had come in, cannoning off both sides of the band room door before collapsing hiccuping on a sofa, gazing out unseeingly at the chestnut candles tossing in the park.

He was followed by Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin, angelic face flushed with excitement over the photos she had just picked up from Boots.

‘This is Justin.’ She brandished a photograph of a gorgeous two year old in front of Abby and Clarissa.

‘Gorgeous,’ sighed Abby. ‘And that’s darling of you and him.’

‘I expect my husband’ll put that one in his wallet,’ Mary said happily.

‘You don’t have a photograph of me in your wallet, Victor,’ nagged Juno.

‘Haven’t got a wallet,’ said Viking, who was returning from the bar with a cup of black coffee for Cyril and a Penguin for Nugent.

‘Haven’t got any money either.’

Neither Covent Garden nor the London Met had yet paid him and Juno’s mortgage was eating into his salary.

Hearing guffaws from the window, he swung round. It was Dixie and Randy grinning and red faced from the pub.

‘We’ve bought you a box of After Eights, Victoria dear, to round off your slap-up meal.’

Viking auditioned in the middle of the afternoon, and he mobbed the whole thing up. Somehow he had persuaded the pianist to play a piece of music more suited to a strip club. The listening panel pursed their lips and looked even more disapproving when, after a couple of bars from the French horn, a lacy black bra flew over the brown velvet curtains, followed in leisurely succession by fishnet stockings, scarlet satin garters and, finally, a purple G-string, which landed on the shiny board-room table in front of Abby.

Abby’s cries of ‘This is obnoxious,’ were then drowned by Don Juan’s horn call, before Viking launched into the love duet from Ein Heldenleben, establishing no doubt as to his identity.

Sauntering out, he left a note on his chair: ‘Please leave this seat as you would find it,’ for Randy Hamilton, who laughed so much he could hardly play.

‘Fuck,’ Randy said, after the tenth wrong note.

‘Shut up, you are not allowed to speak,’ hissed a sweating Nicholas, who was supposed to be calling out players’ numbers to the listening panel as he fed them in.

‘Fuck,’ said Randy for a second time, so distracting Nicholas, that Blue, plus horn, was able to slide into the board room unnoticed, and hide in a big cupboard in the corner.

Thus, when a swaying Cyril was posted in by Viking, and Nicholas had called out his number, fifty-five, Blue put his horn to his lips and played the horn solo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream so beautifully, the panel halted him after a couple of minutes.

‘That’s fine,’ Abby turned to Miss Priddock. ‘Put a “yes” to Number Fifty-Five.’

‘Definitely,’ agreed Lionel and Miles.

The next moment, to their horror, a beaming Cyril staggered through the curtains, solemnly shook hands with them all, blew a kiss to Miss Priddock and tottered out.

Miles and Lionel and Abby were all furious, but not so cross as Quinton Mitchell, Viking’s Third Horn, who threatened to sneak to the panel about Blue’s playing instead of Cyril.

‘I have to sit next to the drunken old bugger,’

‘If you breathe a word,’ Viking seized Quinton’s lapels, ‘I’ll tell Mrs Mitchell exactly who you were op to at Hugo’s leaving party.’

‘Fifty-Six,’ shouted Nicholas.

The piano started playing, a few seconds later a flute joined in.

Lionel and Miles stared fixedly at their notes. Abby felt as though steel nails were being drilled through her head. A wave of vindictiveness overwhelmed her.

‘That’s enough warming up,’ she shouted a few minutes later. ‘We’re pushed for time, right, can you get started.’

There was a pause, then a furious squeaky little voice said: ‘I’ve just played the slow movement of Poulenc’s Flute Sonata.’

Abby shook off Miles’s restraining hand.

‘Can you come through?’

Anger made Juno look even more enchanting, putting a rare warmth in her cold eyes.

‘It’s no good, Juno,’ said an unrepentant Abby. ‘I guess you’d better look for another job, you’re just not up to it.’

‘I was good enough for your predecessor,’ hissed Juno and stormed out.

‘That was very unwise,’ smirked Lionel.

‘Wonderfully lyrical,’ he murmured mistily a minute later, as Hilary, whom he’d coached between bonks last night, started paddling laboriously through the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.

She was interrupted, however, by Viking, barging in without knocking, all slitty eyes and blazing Irish rage.

‘How dare you sack Juno?’ he yelled at Abby.

‘S-s-she’s useless, she must have slept with someone to get that job.’

‘She’s sleeping with me, and if she goes, I go.’

And in barged Blue.

‘If Viking goes, I go.’

And in marched Dixie and Randy.

‘And if Viking and Blue go, we go,’ they chorused.

‘Woof, woof, woof,’ barked Mr Nugent, bringing up the rear.

‘You fucking band of brothers, I don’t understand you guys,’ yelled back Abby. ‘I guessed love was blind, but I never figured it was deaf as well. I don’t know why you’re being so supportive,’ she added to Nugent. ‘Juno’ll have you out in a trice.’

Miles, who disapproved of swearing and dogs, looked very shocked.

As a result, the Steel Elf was reinstated but Abby had made herself an implacable enemy.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Poor Abby had such good intentions. But being musical director of the RSO continued to be an absolute nightmare. After one particularly rowdy rehearsal towards the end of April, during which Viking had peremptorily summoned the entire brass section out into the car-park to push his ancient BMW because he was late for the dentist, Abby received a summons from the manager.

Finding Lord Leatherhead and Miles, who’d given her even less support than Lionel, awaiting her, Abby steeled herself for a wigging. Instead, they told her they had found a new managing director.

‘It’s George Hungerford,’ said Lord Leatherhead in tones of awe. ‘We’ve been very, very lucky.’

Abby had no idea who George Hungerford was, and was even less impressed when they told her he was one of the few property developers who had managed to increase his fortune during the recession.

A rough, tough Yorkshireman, who in his youth had sung bass in the great Huddersfield Choral Society, George had always fancied running an orchestra, and reckoned he could sort out the RSO in one or two days a month with his hands tied behind his back. He would take over at the beginning of May.

All the female musicians and the secretaries on the top floor were wildly excited that he was also between marriages. ‘Gorgeous George’ as they already called him, could also be relied on to take L’Appassionata down a peg. Blood in the aisles was joyfully predicted.

Abby was too worried about next week’s concert and her even more revolutionary plans to re-audition the entire and often frightful Rutminster Choir before the German Requiem in June, really to take in George’s appointment.

Wrestling with the complexities of the last movement of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, she had only fallen into bed at five o’clock by which time the dawn chorus, who sang infinitely better than the Rutminster Choir, had started. She was woken by a maid coming in to clean the room at nine-thirty. Leaping out of bed, she frantically tugged on yesterday’s sweaty clothes. Racing down the High Street, she reached the auditorium at seven minutes to ten, only to find the place deserted. Unlike American orchestras, British players had a maddening habit of scuttling in at the last moment. As a final insult, Viking wandered in yawning at half-past ten.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he smiled unrepentantly at Abby. ‘I was having a helicopter lesson and I couldn’t find anywhere to park. Hi, sweetheart.’ He paused on the way to kiss the Steel Elf.

Incensed because the French horns start the Fifth Symphony, Abby proceeded to dock half an hour off Viking’s pay, which triggered off the orchestra. She had vowed to be accommodating today and as a joke had even circulated a photostat of a dictionary definition of the word, pianissimo, to all the brass section to stop them drowning everyone else. But they had merely made paper darts and thrown them back at her.

Lionel the leader, who should have supported Abby, made no attempt to hush the chat that rose like a fountain whenever there was a pause. Now he asked if he might have a word. Abby jumped down from the rostrum, acutely conscious of her scruffy appearance and dirty hair beside Lionel’s coiffeured glamour. Even his breath smelt of peppermint, as he said: ‘Look, we’ve recorded this symphony with Rodney and Ambrose. If you want to get through it, just sit on top of the orchestra and coast.’

‘And leave you in charge, no, thank you,’ snapped Abby.

Lionel and Hilary exchanged told-you-so shrugs.

Two minutes later Abby called a halt.

‘Excuse me, flutes, you were dragging a little.’

‘You amaze me,’ Juno lowered her long blond eyelashes, ‘we were only following you.’

Ignoring the jibe, Abby tried to inspire them by telling them of Sibelius’s emotions when he wrote the symphony, but they all started yawning.

‘As you know the last movement ends with the six huge hammer blows of the God Thor,’ persisted Abby.

‘My back’s thore after all those semi-quavers,’ said a voice from the back of the violas.

‘Cut out the programme notes and get on with it,’ shouted Randy.

Dixie got out a porn mag.

Abby’s messianic streak emerged five minutes later when the horns launched into a glorious swinging tune.

‘This is a great euphoric affirmation of hope,’ she said earnestly, ‘which Sibelius wrote after he discovered that he wasn’t dying of cancer, after all, so I want you horns to play as though the sun was bursting through dark clouds and…’

Viking let her run on for a minute, before looking up.

‘You mean you want it louder,’ he drawled.

The orchestra cracked up.

‘No, I do not,’ screamed Abby. ‘I want you to play with more passion, and build up to a splendid sforzando.’

‘It says fortissimo in my score.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, let’s get on.’

Nellie Nicholson, the orchestra nymphomaniac, was a third desk cellist whose cello was nicknamed ‘Lucky’ by the male musicians. Five minutes later she came in loudly in one of the long pauses between the final hammer blows.

‘Sorry, sorry, Abby,’ she called out apologetically. ‘A fly landed on my score and I played it by mistake.’

Again the orchestra cracked up.

Abby totally lost her cool.

‘What in hell’s the matter with you guys?’

‘You are,’ piped up a voice from the back of the violas.

Abby couldn’t detect the offender who was hidden by Fat Isobel, who was even larger than Fat Rosie. Fat Isobel had a big jaw, and always looked as though she’d cleaned the grill pan with her hair. Despite this, on last year’s tour of the Oman, lots of Arabs had seriously tried to buy Isobel. Leaping down, barging between the second violins and violas, somehow circumnavigating Fat Isobel, Abby found Clare, the orchestra Sloane, and Candy, her best friend, from Australia, both ravishing blondes, playing battleships and discussing their sex life.

‘You will not hide behind Isobel,’ stormed Abby.

As she yanked their music-stand into view, the viola part of Sibelius’s Fifth fluttered to the floor.

‘Excuse me, Maestro,’ Steve Smithson, the RSO’s union rep, was beside her in a trice, breathing fire. ‘It’s Mr Charlton and the stage hands’ job to move the music-stands. If you observe Rule 223,’ he brandished the book under her nose.

For a second he and Abby glared at each other. Behind him Abby could see Nicholas, the orchestra manager, bald head bobbing like a buoy at sea, as he hopped from one foot to another in the wings, terrified at the prospect of a walk-out before the concert.

Wearily, Abby climbed back onto the rostrum.

‘Let’s play the last page again, and no-one is to come in between hammer blows.’

‘With respect, Maestro,’ said Lionel silkily, ‘it’s half-past eleven,’ and was nearly knocked sideways by junior members of the various sections and a barking Mr Nugent racing out to be first in the tea queue.

Abby slumped in the conductor’s room, burning face in her hands. Having had no time to put on a deodorant, she could smell last night’s sweat, now sour with fear. Dipping a towel in cold water, she rubbed it under her armpits, then groaned as she glanced in the mirror, the rust jersey was far too hot and clashed with her hectic red cheeks, her hair rose like Strewel Peter. She knew the orchestra were trying to goad her into resigning. She mustn’t be beaten.

Outside she could hear the cuckoo. Beyond the park, over the palest green rolling fields of barley, she could see the Blackmere Woods and knew what she must do. Splashing her face with cold water, she picked up her stick with resolve.

The second half went better. The horns and trumpets were swinging joyfully like monkeys in the jungle through the glorious heroic tune. The bows of the string players were a blur, they were going so fast.

But, as Abby paused to improve the ensemble playing of the Second Violins, little Claude ‘Cherub’ Wilson put up his hand.

Cherub, Second Percussion, had blond curls and blue eyes and hardly looked old enough to be playing in a primary-school band.

All the orchestra adored him. Miss Priddock baked him cakes. Even the Celtic Mafia allowed him to travel in their car to concerts to act as Court Jester. He was now sitting in the percussion seat behind Viking.

‘Scuse me, Miss Rosen.’

‘Yes Cherub,’ Abby’s face softened.

‘You know that bit in the first movement?’

Abby picked up the score and patiently started to leaf back through the pages.

‘Which bit, Cherub?’

‘The bit when the horns come in an’ the trumpets an’ the strings.’

‘There are a lot of bits like that.’

Cherub leant forward, consulting Viking’s score.

‘I found it a minute ago, it goes, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,’ he sung in a shrill falsetto, ‘or maybe it’s la, la, la, la, la, la.’

The orchestra were clutching their sides.

‘Don’t laugh at Cherub,’ snapped Abby. ‘I know that bit,’ she flipped more pages. ‘Here it is. But you’re not even playing,’ she cried in outrage, then realizing she’d been hoodwinked, ‘in fact there’s no percussion in this symphony.’

‘I know,’ Cherub beamed at her. ‘But it’s a nice bit, isn’t it? We do like nice bits you know; can you play it again?’

‘No, we flaming can’t,’ Abby contemplated hurling her score at him, but she couldn’t throw that far.

Quivering with rage, she clutched the brass rail, counting to ten, deciding to give them one more chance.

‘During the break,’ she leafed forward to the last movement, ‘I looked out at the Blackmere Woods, and realized how all the different greens contribute to the beauty of the spring, merging together like a great orchestra.’

Cynical, bored, impatient, menacing, the RSO spread out below her.

‘I like to think of you, Eldred and Hilary, and your clarinets providing the acid yellow of the poplars, right, and the trombones,’ Abby smiled at Dixie, ‘like the stinging saffron of the great oaks, and the flutes, the lovely eerie silver of the whitebeams. Barry’s basses splendid dark evergreens, and of course the horns, Viking and Blue and co., soaring like beech trees topped with radiant dancing pale green.’

‘I don’t want Nugent lifting his leg on me,’ grumbled Viking.

But Abby was in her stride. Looking round at the rapt faces, she thought: I’ve got them at last.

‘I could find trees to illustrate the wonder of the trumpets and the bassoons,’ she smiled forgivingly at Steve Smithson, the union rep, ‘but all I want to say is that like the spring the sound of your individual instruments can blend together to create the beauty of Sibelius-’

But, as she paused to wipe away a tear, Dixie Douglas let out a long and hellish fart.

Immediately Hilary leapt to her feet, flapping her score in horror.

‘Lionel, do something.’

And Abby flipped. She was screaming so hysterically at Dixie, that she didn’t hear the door opening at the back of the hall, or notice the laughter freezing on the faces of the players.

Hearing voices, however, she swung round.

‘Get out, get OUT, how many times have I told you, visitors are not allowed in the hall during rehearsals.’

‘Unless they wear gas masks,’ said Viking.

But the visitors came on. Abby swung round again, with the words: ‘Didn’t you fucking hear me?’ dying on her lips. For it was the chairman, a smirking Miles and a handsome, belligerent stranger.

‘Sorry to interrupt you, Abby,’ said Lord Leatherhead heartily, ‘but I just wanted to introduce you all to your new — er — chief executive, George Hungerford.’

All the orchestra clapped in delight.

Surreptitiously, from behind the bulk of Fat Isobel, Candy got out a huge red brush, powdered her nose, then handed the brush to Clare.

George Hungerford had a square jaw, a broken nose, a mouth set like a trap and tired, hard, turned down eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles. He looked as tough as a limestone cliff and about as unscalable. He had thick hair, which was cropped very close to his head and the colour and strokeable texture of a bullrush. His dark grey suit was well cut to set off flat, broad shoulders, but also to disguise a spreading midriff.

‘He looks like a bouncer,’ murmured Randy Hamilton.

‘And we all know who we want him to chuck out,’ murmured back Dixie.

George then mounted the stage and told the orchestra in a broad Yorkshire accent, how much he was looking forward to working with them. As he talked, his eyes moved solemnly over each player as though he was memorizing their faces for some future conjuring trick.

He didn’t envisage any great problems, he said.

‘Running an orchestra’s like running any other business. If it doesn’t make a profit, you make changes. I’d like to look at what you’re all up to before I make any decisions.’ Then he added without a flicker of a smile, ‘And I hope you all play a bloody sight better this evening.’

‘Why the hell’s George Hungerford interested in us?’ Viking asked Blue. ‘His usual form is bribing planning officers and knee-capping little old sitting-tenants.’

‘I’d lie down in front of his bulldozer any day,’ sighed Candy.

‘Looks ruthless,’ said Hilary, with a sniff.

‘He is, too,’ giggled Clare, the orchestra Sloane. ‘His wife was called Ruth. They split up last year. I read all about it in the News of the World. Ruth ran off with one of his even richer rivals. She’s very beautiful in a Weybridge, skirt-on-the-knee, matching accessory way. Those classical types always screw like stoats beneath the Elizabeth Arden exterior.’

‘You should know,’ said Hilary bitchily.

Abby slunk back to the Old Bell, mortified that George’s first impression should have been of a sweaty, shaggy, screaming virago. Tonight she would wow him.

As if in anticipation, two cardboard boxes of ge-owns were awaiting her from Parker’s; horrors in mauve, lime-green, jaundice-yellow and the most shocking pink, encrusted with rhinestones, sequins and diamanté, over-busy with cowled necklines, floating panels and kick pleats.

Accompanying them was a handwritten, bullying note, urging Abby to make George’s first night special with an evening gown fitting the occasion in every sense. Mrs Parker had somehow got hold of Abby’s measurements.

Incensed at being dictated to, Abby didn’t even try them on, merely washing her hair and dressing in the flowing indigo trouser suit she’d worn at her début concert.

She wished she had a friend in the orchestra with whom to discuss George. He had seemed so forceful because he’d made no attempt to ingratiate himself. He had certainly electrified the women in the orchestra. Parker’s sold out of scented body lotion by closing time, and scuffles broke out in the changing room, as the prettiest girls fought for a glimpse in the communal mirror as they applied blusher and knotted coloured ribbons in their hair.

Hilary was livid, on George’s first night, that Eldred and not she was playing the clarinet solo in the Mother Goose Suite.

‘That dress is much too low, Nellie,’ she snapped. ‘You know we can’t show bare arms or cleavages.’

‘Some of us haven’t got cleavages to show,’ said Nellie, rudely as she sprayed Anais Anais behind her knees. ‘George Hungerford won’t know I haven’t got plunging permission.’

‘With all the different floral scents wafting from the orchestra,’ giggled Candy to Clare, ‘Abby’s going to get her image of a spring meadow, if not a wood.’

Abby was desperate for everything to go well, but, alas, the concert was a disaster. Some joker had slotted a page from Dixie’s porn mag into the middle of her Mother Goose score. Scrumpling it up in a rage, she chucked it over her shoulder, where it landed in the massive, corsetted lap of Mrs Parker, who was already spitting because no ge-own had been worn.

The hall was half-empty and the pouring rain, which had discouraged random ticket buyers, dripped through the roof on Abby’s head, but failed to extinguish the fire in a local bakery, so the first movement of Sibelius was ruined by clanging fire-engines. Worst of all, one of Miss Priddock’s programme sellers, over-excited by the arrival of George Hungerford, charged back and forth to the Ladies throughout, and when a chain wouldn’t pull, started furiously clanking in syncopation to the heroic swinging tune in the horns, reducing the RSO to more fits of laughter.

‘Delhi Belly Variations,’ murmured Viking to Blue as he emptied water out of his horn.

But at last they reached the six wonderfully dramatic hammer blows, which test any conductor, because an audience can often assume the whole thing’s finished and start clapping too early.

Abby’s pauses were the longest and most dramatic ever heard in the H.P. Hall, but during the penultimate silence, the chain in the Ladies clanked again. Dixie Douglas promptly corpsed and came in a beat too soon. Forgetting herself, an incensed Abby raised two very public fingers at him and, running off the platform, locked herself in the conductor’s room, refusing to acknowledge any of the applause. She needed a showdown with George so she could pour out her grievances, but when she finally unlocked the door the place was deserted, and the caretaker was locking up.

Escaping through a side-door, Abby found the rain had stopped, and breathed in a lovely smell of wet earth and the lilies of the valley which Old Cyril had planted under Miss Priddock’s window.

During concerts, the orchestral car-park was jam-packed with small used cars, vans, old Volvos with different coloured doors, Morris Minors and Viking’s ancient BMW with the ‘Hit Me, I Need the Money’ sticker in the back. It was now deserted except for a blue Rolls Royce and one of George Hungerford’s heavies in a chauffeur’s uniform and a state of shock.

‘Fort we’d never escape wivout injury,’ he patted the Rolls’ bonnet, ‘but it was empty in five minutes. Vroom, vroom, vroom. No-one ‘it us. Never seen driving like it.’

‘Glad they do something well.’

‘It was a grite concert. Don’t know how you remember all them notes.’

‘Thanks,’ said Abby. ‘Where’s your boss?’

The chauffeur nodded up to the chairman’s office, where George Hungerford, puffing at a cigar, blotted out light from the window, as he paced back and forth, talking and talking.

Probably about me, thought Abby wearily.

As she entered her hotel, a yawning receptionist handed her a big bunch of wild garlic.

‘A child has just delivered this.’

Imagining some kind of voodoo, Abby was about to chuck the starry white flowers into the street, when she found a note, which she ripped open with trembling hands. She read:

Dear Miss Rosen,

Sorry I upset you,

love

Cherub Wilson.

It was the first kindness anyone had shown her in weeks. Abby started to cry helplessly. She must get a grip on herself.

Her honeymoon with the Rutshire Butcher it seemed was also over. His review of the concert was headlined: FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS — ‘The lavatory chain,’ he wrote, ‘was the only thing that played at the correct tempo in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

Fortunately George Hungerford disappeared in his helicopter the following morning, no doubt looking for properties to develop. He also had several acres in central Manchester to think about. After a slight blip in the recession, the developer’s cranes were flying again.

In the afternoon, the RSO, who were supposed to provide music for nine counties and who had at least two away fixtures a week, were due to set off to Starhampton in the West Country. Two coaches had been laid on for the hundred-mile journey. The first coach, which included non-smokers and non-drinkers, a bridge four who played regularly together and a high-minded group, headed by Hilary, who sang madrigals, was known as ‘Pond Life’. The second, which included drinkers, smokers and brass players was known as ‘Moulin Rouge’.

The Musicians’ Union is one of the few unions virtually untouched by Thatcher’s reforms. Steve Smithson set out on every trip armed with a tape measure (because any gig over seven miles away entitled the musicians to a meal allowance), a stop watch so they got sufficient breaks the other end and a thermometer to make sure the hall, cathedral or school in which they were playing reached the required seventy degrees.

Before an away fixture there was always an argy-bargy between Steve and Nicholas, the orchestra manager, who was known to the musicians as ‘Knickers’.

Orchestras are sustained by silly jokes. When poor Nicholas was unhappy and stressed out, which was most of the time, they all chorused ‘Knickers Down’, or ‘Knickers in a Twist’. Today Knickers had caught Steve trying to persuade the bus drivers to leave at one and dawdle, instead of one-thirty, so that the musicians could claim for a lunch allowance.

It was now twenty-nine minutes past one and Knickers stood beside the artists’ entrance of H.P. Hall, ticking off names in a tartan notebook as musicians clambered aboard the two coaches.

By one-thirty only Little Jenny was missing. As she played at the back of the second violins, it wouldn’t be a major crisis if she didn’t show up. So the buses set off, splashing down the High Street out into the angelic springtime, stopping to pick up Simon Painshaw from his bachelor pad in the Close and Hilary from her thatched cottage, and Barry, the Principal Bass, from his converted barn, with his beautiful new second wife running barefoot across the lawn to kiss him goodbye.

After yesterday’s downpour, cricket pitches under water glittered in the sunshine and puddles reflected thundery grey sky, pale green trees and clashing pink hawthorns.

It was an incontrovertible fact that however capable the RSO were of pulling rabbits out of hats and playing superbly when they reached their destination, many of them behaved like hyperactive children before and afterwards.

Usually Viking drove to concerts in his battered BMW, which had been fitted with a hooter that played Don Juan’s horn call. Into the car he would cram Juno, Blue, Randy, Dixie and Cherub, so they could all apply for a petrol allowance, or on occasion, a train fare.

But, at the last moment, Juno had cried off with flu. Finding a replacement at such short notice had added to Knickers’ problems.

As it was also Viking’s birthday, he and the Celtic Mafia decided to travel on Moulin Rouge. Viking, who’d been blasting his lip away moonlighting with a local jazz band, hadn’t been to bed and was drunk when he got onto the coach. Freed from Juno’s beady chaperonage, he was soon pouncing on every girl in sight.

‘That guy’s got no stop button,’ observed Candy, who was sitting beside her friend Clare, who was flipping through Hello! and Tatler recognizing all her friends.

‘When he’s plastered he’ll bonk anything,’ Clare lowered her voice, ‘Juno gave him a Black amp; Decker for his birthday, such an affront to his manhood. I think he’s miserable.’

‘Then why does he leap to her defence whenever Appassionata has a go at her?’

‘Must be elf-obsessed,’ giggled Candy. ‘Oh, there’s you,’ she peered at Tatler. ‘That ball gown’s great.’

From the back of the coach came shouts of laughter and the snatch of a rugger song, followed by Cherub’s high-pitched giggle which set everyone off. Blue sat slightly apart sipping malt whisky, immersed in Alan Clark’s diaries. Randy and Dixie were obviously determined to catch up with Viking, who was now snogging an overjoyed Nellie the Nympho.

In the Pond Life coach in front, as they drove through the outskirts of Bath, the madrigal group could be seen making silly faces.

‘April is in my mistress’ face and July in her eyes,’ sang Lionel in a light tenor as he gazed at a simpering Hilary.

Also in the group was Simon Painshaw, his red dreadlocks flying as he tossed his head in time to the music, and Molly Armitage, a rank-and-file viola player. Known as ‘Militant Moll’, Molly had short spiky hair, an aggrieved face, a triangular figure, with narrow, twitching shoulders falling to massive hips, and thought everything degraded women. She was having an affaire with Ninion, Second Oboe, who was half her size and normally very meek. Molly, however, had so fired him up that he had become very assertive and wanted to oust Simon as First Oboe. Militant Moll also wanted Ninion to leave his wife and take her name.

‘Fa, la, la, la, la, la,’ sang Militant Moll, gazing into Ninion’s blinking fieldmouse eyes.

‘Lardi, da, da, da, da, da,’ giggled Nellie, buttoning up her dress as she collapsed behind Candy and Clare. ‘That Hilary is such a bitch. Look at her vamping Lionel in her pie-frill collar. She gave me another bollocking about my cleavage last night. “You are not allowed to show flesh, Nell, we are all supposed to look black at distance.”’

Nellie caught Hilary’s mincing whine to perfection.

‘I’ll black her eye. You wait till she sees what I’m wearing tonight, the slit up my skirt meets my plunge head-on. I wonder how long it’ll be before L’Appassionata is shoehorned into one of Nosy Parker’s ghastly ge-owns.’

‘Wonder how long it will be before Gorgeous George shoehorns her out of the job,’ said Clare. ‘You can’t get away with V-signs on the platform, even if it’s only at Dixie.’

‘Taking my name in vain as usual. Any of you girls want a drink?’

Dixie armed with paper cups and a bottle of Southern Comfort, was swaying above them. His normally red face and neck were now as brown as a builder’s from so much free time playing golf and reading the Sun on the flat roof of H.P.Hall.

‘There you are again,’ Candy had found another picture of Clare, this time at a wedding in Hello!.

‘And there’s my wicked brother and there’s Mummy,’ cried Clare.

Dixie glanced at Hello!.

‘I wouldn’t mind getting orf with Mummah myself,’ he mocked, as he handed paper cups to both girls.

Clare giggled. Despite that gha-a-a-astly accent, she thought Dixie frightfully attractive.

Dixie also had the ‘hots’ for Clare. Despite those awful corduroy culottes and the matelot jersey tugged down to cover a big bum, and an Alice band holding her brains in, Clare was a natural blonde with lovely skin and slender ankles.

‘I’ll fix Lady Clare,’ Dixie muttered to Randy on his return. ‘I’ll wipe Daddy’s smile off his face in Hello!.’

As Candy emerged from the coach 100, which was shaped like an upended coffin, Viking, ready for new sport, called out: ‘That’s a gorgeous T-shirt.’

‘On special offer in Parker’s this week,’ said Candy.

‘All my offers are special,’ retorted Viking, pulling her onto his knee.

Abby, who still hadn’t had time to buy a car, hired one to drive to Starhampton. Popping into the hall to pick up a black satin trouser suit from the conductor’s room, she found Little Jenny in floods, her round face red from the hairdresser, her brown hair a mass of Pre-Raphaelite curls.

‘They kept me under the dryer so long I missed the bus. Knickers’ll murder me.’

‘No, he won’t, hop in,’ said Abby. ‘You can remind me to drive on the left. Have you had any lunch? There are sandwiches in the glove compartment.’

It soon became clear that Jenny was thrilled not to be going on the coaches.

‘If you ride in Pond Life, Hilary and Molly sneer at you. It’s all right going there on Moulin Rouge, at least you can smoke, but it’s terrifying coming back, all the guys pounce on you.’

‘Who does?’ asked Abby.

‘El Creepo and Carmine Jones,’ Jenny bit into an egg-and-cress sandwich. ‘They both told me I’d get the job if I went to bed with them,’ she shuddered.

‘That’s gross,’ said Abby in horror. ‘Who else?’

‘The Celtic Mafia. They all think they’re God’s gift. All brass players are chauvinist pigs and homophobic. They despise Simon because he’s gay and Ninion because he’s gentle. Dixie and Randy are the worst. The other day,’ Jenny went absolutely scarlet, ‘the coach was driving past a sewage farm, and Dixie looked round at me, and shouted, “Close your legs, woman.” I was so embarrassed. That’s George Hungerford’s new place.’

Up an avenue of limes, Abby could see a large red Georgian house, big enough to be a school or a mental home. No doubt George would convert it, flog it and move on.

‘The changing rooms are a nightmare,’ went on Jenny, tucking into cucumber-and-tunafish. ‘Every time you take your clothes off, you feel the scorn. I know I’m overweight, but they make you feel like an outcast. And none of them seem interested in learning to play better. They accuse me of being a creep if I take my music home, or if I practise during the break. And they’re so awful to conductors.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ sighed Abby, desperate for reassurance.

‘Oh, they don’t like you because they hate taking orders from a woman. I think it’s mean,’ said Jenny, and having finished all the sandwiches, she fell asleep.

As Abby drove towards the slowly sinking sun, the countryside changed. White houses with grey roofs replaced the thatched cottages. The verges became banks filled with anemones and violets. Fields, divided by winding streams lined by osiers, rose into rounded hills. Wild garlic was taking over from fading bluebells. She must thank Cherub for his flowers, and she must fight on and restore some idealism to the RSO and protect people like Simon, Ninion and poor Little Jenny.

She arrived at Starhampton Town Hall as the instruments were being unloaded from a huge grey van with ‘Rutminster Symphony Orchestra’ written in red letters on the side. Barry was worried about a missing double bass which had already been unloaded. Carmine Jones was having a row with Charlton Handsome, the stage manager, whom he claimed had dented his trumpet.

‘You’ll bloody well have to pay for it.’

Viking was on Knickers’s mobile calling Juno.

‘Hi Shweetheart, howsh Nugent?’

As Abby followed the winding passages backstage, she could see through a door marked ‘Ladies of the Orchestra’, musicians hanging up black dresses from Next, Monsoon and Laura Ashley, and taking instruments out of cases, which also contained dusters, Lockets for sore throats, Ibuleve for aching backs, apples, fruit drinks in oblong cartons and pictures of husbands, boyfriends and children.

Having driven here with Abby, Jenny was delighted to find herself an unaccustomed centre of attention.

‘What was she like?’

‘OK, she shared her sandwiches with me. I think she’s lonely and wanted someone to talk to.’

After a quick rehearsal and dash into Starhampton for something to eat (and in the Celtic Mafia’s case to drink), the orchestra emerged transformed and mysteriously glamorous in their tails and black dresses to face a packed hall.

Both Hilary and Peggy Parker had a fit when they saw Nellie’s slit skirt fall open to reveal a red suspender belt and black fishnet stockings. Peggy Parker’s piggy little eyes were soon distracted by Francis Fairchild who played on the second desk of the First Violins. A wonderful musician, Francis was known as the ‘Good Loser’, because he was always mislaying his possessions. Tonight he had lost his black shoes, and padded onto the platform with black socks tugged over his brown shoes.

The Magic Flute overture fizzed along. The provinces were crazy about Mozart, and the audience were looking forward to his Second Horn Concerto. But just as Abby was returning to the platform, she heard crashes and shouting coming from the Green Room.

Rushing in, she found Lionel, Nicholas, Miles, Charlton Handsome, the Pond Life driver and two stage hands in dinner-jackets trying to restrain Viking, who was plainly out of his skull. Seeing Abby, he shook them off.

‘Maestro,’ mockingly he bowed, his slitty eyes going in all directions as he swayed in front of her, ‘let me play, I know I can play the concert.’

The scores of Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto were kept stacked in the van for any emergency. The sneering bully boy, Carmine Jones, despite his dented trumpet, would be more than happy to play it. Quinton Mitchell, the Third Horn, who badly wanted Viking’s job, was equally happy to stand in for him and play the Mozart. But Abby hadn’t mugged up the Haydn, and despite his disruptive behaviour, she still carried a flickering flashlight for Viking.

‘OK, if you figure you can do it, go ahead.’

It was a terrifying gamble, drink stops tongues and fingers co-ordinating. Throughout the concerto, over her left shoulder, Abby was aware of Viking swaying like a white poplar in a high wind. But he played flawlessly as though the shade of his hero Dennis Brain was lovingly guiding his breath and his long fingers. Perhaps it was his sadness over Juno, thought Abby wistfully, which made the middle movement unbearably poignant.

Having glassily acknowledged the roars of applause, however, Viking staggered back to the band room and passed out.

Elgar’s Second Symphony was a success after the break, particularly with the orchestra, because Abby was so carried away by the melancholy nostalgic music that she slowed down again, and pushed the orchestra into overtime, which put poor Knickers in a twist once more.

As there were some excellent chip shops and Indian restaurants in Starhampton, Knickers was also worried he might lose several musicians. But the quickest dressers in the world, within seconds, the orchestra were back in their clothes, tails back in plastic hangers, crushed velvet dresses shoved into carrier bags, and the instruments stowed away in the van.

Francis the Good Loser was chucked out of the Pond Life coach for trying to smuggle on a take-away curry.

‘Let him go and stink out Moulin Rouge,’ shouted Randy Hamilton. ‘We’ll all go and mob up Pond Life.’

So clanking bottles, carrying bags of chips and camp-followed by Clare, Candy, Nellie and Jenny and four percussion players, the Celtic Mafia changed buses.

Having had a good sleep in Elgar’s Second Symphony during which Quinton did stand in for him, Viking had woken up and was raring to go.

‘It’s my birthday, I can behave exactly as I like.’

He then remembered the birthday cake Miss Priddock had baked for him and tried to cut it on its silver cardboard disc with Blue’s penknife. As the coach moved off through the empty streets of Starhampton, however, he upended it spreading cream and chocolate butter-icing all over the floor of the bus to the noisy cheers of his supporters.

The bridge four looked on stonily, particularly when Viking bore a pretty thoroughly over-excited married piccolo player off to the back of the bus. The madrigal group decided to ignore such infantile behaviour.

Militant Moll got out her song book.

‘We better call in the pest-control officer,’ she said sourly to Hilary, who’d just given Nellie yet another lecture on being improperly dressed.

‘In the final analysis, I prefer Byrd to Gibbons,’ Ninion was telling Simon Painshaw.

‘Unfair to gibbons,’ shouted Randy, making monkey faces and scratching himself under the arms.

The Celtic Mafia corpsed again. Lionel cleared his throat.

‘Come away, come sweet love, the golden morning breaks,’ he sang to a dimpling Hilary.

‘All the earth, all the air of love and pleasure speaks,’ sang Ninion, blushing as he gazed up at Militant Moll’s granite jaw.

A rival singsong, however, was soon in full swing at the back of the bus.

‘If forty whores in purple drawers were walking down the Strand,’ bellowed Randy and Dixie. ‘Do you suppose, the walrus said, that we could raise a stand?’

Dixie had Clare on his knee. Her big bum felt nice and warm, as he stroked her slender ankles.

‘Just ignore them and keep going,’ hissed Hilary.

‘My bonny lass she smileth

When she my heart beguileth,’ sang Simon, casting nervous glances at the back of the bus.

‘Fa, la, la, la, la, la,’ screeched Hilary.

‘Bloody sight too far, la, la, la, la, la,’ sang Dixie, chucking Clare’s velvet Alice band into the passing pale green woods.

‘I doubt it, said the carpenter, but wouldn’t it be grand,’ sang Randy, pulling Candy onto his knee.

‘That’s enough,’ snapped Lionel, but to no avail.

‘And all the time, the dirty swine was coming in his hand,’ chorused the Celtic Mafia.

‘Disgusting. Do something, Lionel.’ Hilary had gone pink with rage.

Afraid to confront the Celtic Mafia head-on, slipping on chocolate butter-icing and cream, Lionel strode down the bus to lodge a complaint with Knickers who was far too busy sitting on top of the driver, urging him on like Ben Hur. If the coach reached H.P. Hall later than twelve-thirty they would be into the next day, and by union rules, the musicians would be entitled to an extra free day later in the year.

‘You’re the leader, Lionel, you sort it out,’ said Knickers firmly, then to the driver: ‘Left here, then we can short-cut to Bath.’

Nellie the Nympho had other plans. Installing herself in the right-hand seat, just behind the driver, she un-buttoned her pink cardigan, enough for Blue still immersed in Alan Clark, to rub Ibuleve into her shoulders.

‘As it fell upon a day in the Merry Month of May,’ sang the Madrigal Group with gritted-teethed desperation.

‘The love juice running down my index finger,’ hollered back Dixie.

‘The way we used to come, and how we lingered,’ sang Randy in harmony.

‘Oh, how the smell of you clings,’ joined in Viking, finally letting go of the ecstatic piccolo player.

‘These foolish things remind me of you,’ sang Randy, smiling into Candy’s eyes.

‘Rather like being an air hostess,’ giggled Cherub, as he slid down the gangway carrying paper refills of whisky to Blue and Nellie, who, by this time, had undone most of her buttons. In his rear mirror, the bus driver could see her splendid breasts wriggling as she writhed under Blue’s expert fingers. The bus was definitely slowing down.

May 1st was nearly over. Anxious to win his bet, Dixie was geeing up Viking.

‘Why don’t you ring Juno?’ He handed him Knickers’s mobile.

‘Hi, schweetheart,’ said Viking a couple of minutes later, after punching out three wrong numbers. ‘Howsh Nugent?’

‘The bitch hung up on me,’ he said furiously.

Abby, who had been coerced into attending some mayoral reception, caught up with the coaches, around eleven forty-five. She’d been thinking of ways to make Little Jenny happier and, looking into the coach, was horrified to see Viking, whisky bottle raised to his lips like a conch, coming down the gangway, well, like a Viking, and pulling a girl into his arms. Abby nearly ran into a stone wall, the girl had long brown Pre-Raphaelite curls.

Drawing level, Abby peered in. Definitely Jenny. She must be rescued at all costs. Crawling along behind the coach, ignoring Cherub and Lincoln, Viking’s Fifth Horn, who recognized her and started waving like children, Abby waited for the next pee break.

Spitting with righteous indignation, she fought her way into the bus, seized Jenny’s hand and catching her off balance, dragged her out into the balmy night, where huge moths were bombing the bus’s headlamps.

‘What d’you do that for?’ said an aggrieved Jenny, shoving her left breast inside her bra.

‘Viking’s a beast, an animal. I’m so sorry, Jenny, I should have insisted I drove you back home.’

‘I didn’t mean Viking,’ squeaked Jenny. ‘I’ve wanted to snog him ever since I joined the orchestra.’ And with that she shot back into the bus.

But by this time Jenny’s innings were over. Seeing Fat Isobel stampeding him like a rhino, Viking looked up the coach and saw Hilary.

‘Come here, crosspatch.’

As his beautiful mouth came down on hers, Hilary pretended to fight him off, but she was secretly delighted. Just wait until she told Juno.

Fat Isobel, however, was still bearing down.

‘Come on,’ said Viking, pulling Hilary down the steps to the vertical coffin-shaped lavatory, where he found Militant Moll on the way out.

‘Sweet Moll Malone,’ taunted Viking, pushing her back into the coffin, ‘come and be degraded.’

Although Moll fought him off, she was also delighted. Just wait till she told Juno. Then she discovered Viking had Hilary in tow and had locked the coffin door on all three of them. Furious banging followed.

‘Whatever did Viking do to you?’ said Lionel furiously when at last Hilary emerged with her feathers ruffled.

‘I’m not going to tell you, but he’s got to apologize. I can’t wait to ring Juno.’

Slightly too long afterwards, Militant Moll emerged looking equally ruffled.

‘I’ve been sexually harassed,’ she hissed at Ninion. ‘Why didn’t you come and rescue me?’

Hilary had just finished wising up Juno, when the coach doors opened to let her out at her cottage.

‘See you in about twenty minutes,’ she whispered to Lionel, who, for appearance’s sake, had parked his car at H. P. Hall.

Clarissa and Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin were so tired they had slept through the whole journey. Mary’s head was resting on Clarissa’s shoulder.

‘Pretty thing,’ murmured Viking, stopping in his tracks to admire Mary’s madonna face and bending down, kissed her on the lips. For a second, Mary smiled, then opening her eyes, and realizing it wasn’t Johnno, her husband, she clouted Viking across the face. Sliding to the floor, he passed out cold.

As Randy, Dixie, Blue and Little Cherub carried Viking, like another coffin, to the door of Juno’s converted squash court, singing the ‘Death March’ from Saul, Mr Nugent started howling, and in the darkened bedroom above, the net curtains twitched furiously.

‘Oh, how the smell of you clings,’ sang Randy.

‘Fa, la, la, la, la, la,’ sang Cherub, giggling hysterically and trampling on a lot of pink tulips.

The cathedral clock tolled the half-hour.

‘Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong,’ sang the rest of the bus to wind up Knickers. They would reach H.P. Hall after twelve-thirty and get their free day.

Down below a ding-dong of a different kind was taking place. As Randy played the ‘Last Post’, waking up the entire street, and Nugent’s howls increased, a furious Juno, who’d been given a blow by blow account by Hilary, greeted Viking with a rolling pin.

Viking didn’t make it until the break the following afternoon, staggering in, looking greener than the band room, followed by an exuberant Mr Nugent.

‘Behold El Parco,’ shouted Randy.

‘There’s a special offer for rolling pins in Parker’s basement,’ yelled Dixie.

‘But all Viking’s offers are special,’ said Blue drily.

‘All right, all right.’ Wearily Viking held up a shaking hand. ‘Will anyone I’ve got to apologize to, please line up.’

‘You can start off with me,’ said an angry, north-country voice, and everyone nearly dropped their cups of tea as George Hungerford stalked in. ‘If you ever behave like that again, you’re fired.’

‘How the hell did he become a section leader?’ George asked Lord Leatherhead later.

‘Rodney thought it might make him more responsible, but I’m afraid Viking’s a lawlessness unto himself.’

TWENTY-NINE

As soon as the rehearsal was over George bore Abby off for a pep talk.

‘There’s a light bulb out there,’ he added grimly, as he frogmarched her up the aisle, ‘and this curtain was hanging off its rail the first time I came down. This is an unloved hall.’

‘It’s an unlovable hall,’ snapped Abby. ‘We need a new one or at least a couple of million to restore it, right? Not to mention the chairs that all squeak and the music-stands which clunk.’

She was still listing imperfections when they reached George’s office which had already been re-wallpapered in brushed suede in a rather startling ginger, and re-carpeted in shaggy off-white. It was also now humming with smart computers. The Stock Exchange Index on the television screen showed that George Hungerford shares were up ten pence. The news of his appointment to the RSQ couldn’t have reached the City yet, thought Abby sourly.

The three-piece suite in shabby Liberty print had gone too, replaced by squashy pale brown leather sofas and chairs. A big oak desk dominated the room and on nearby tables like doll’s houses, stood exquisitely made Perspex models of domestic properties and office blocks, which George was currently developing.

On the walls a Keith Vaughan and an Edward Burra of rugged Northern landscapes and a Lowry of a bleak school playground mingled uneasily with aerial views of buildings and a huge map of the British Isles with various property sites ringed.

George had clearly found himself a nice base in the West Country. John Drummond, washing his black fur on the window-sill as he eyed up the brushed suede as a potential scratching-board, and a green vase of Old Cyril’s lilies of the valley, beside the four telephones on the oak desk provided the only cosy note.

Having dispatched a swooning Miss Priddock to make tea and peremptorily ordering Miles’s secretary to hold all calls, George launched into a list of Abby’s imperfections.

The trumpets in the first movement of Elgar’s Second Symphony had come in two bars too early, and the whole thing had been ten minutes too long.

Immediately Abby was on the defensive.

‘Rattle and Previn have both taken longer.’

‘I don’t bluddy care. It pushed the orchestra into overtime, I want the leader’s ass off his seat by nine-thirty. Same thing this afternoon, your little masterclass on the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ again pushed them into overtime.’

‘And I know whose head I’d like on a platter,’ muttered Abby, particularly when George said he wanted her to attend the receptions after every concert, so she could chat up sponsors and council members.

‘That’s your job,’ grumbled Abby. ‘My job is to improve the orchestra.’

‘Haven’t made a great success of it so far,’ said George bluntly. ‘And you won’t have an orchestra at all if we go on losing money like this.’

He then ordered her to turn up at tonight’s party.

‘You’re still a celeb, there’s no price put on the buzz folk get from meeting you. Sponsors need more than their names on the programme, they want their clients to meet the stars. And you can put on a dress. I gather you haven’t been out of trousers since you’ve been here. Your legs are probably the only hidden asset this orchestra possesses.’

Removing his spectacles, he made his eyes redder by rubbing them. He looked very tired, but Abby refused to be mollified.

‘I don’t have the time to socialize.’

‘Uh-uh,’ countered George. ‘You’re coming to this do, and you’ll chat up tonight’s sponsor, Dick Standish. He runs Standish Oil. He’s bringing another potential sponsor, Paul Nathan, CEO of Panacea Pharmaceuticals.’

‘We can’t be sponsored by drug companies. They do such horrific things to animals.’ Protectively Abby stroked John Drummond, who purred in loud agreement.

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ said George irritably. ‘There wouldn’t have been any Michelangelo without the Medicis.’

Swiftly changing the subject before she could argue, he added: ‘And you ought to know your orchestra by now. Americans are supposed to be good at names. First Flute, Second Trombone’s far too impersonal.’

Then, as Abby opened her mouth to protest, he continued, ‘It has far more effect when you’re bawling people out, if you use the correct name.’

‘Right, Godfrey,’ said Abby briskly, then as Miss Priddock came in with a tray weighed down by rainbow cake and daisy-patterned porcelain, ‘No, I haven’t time for a cup of tea, thanks, Miss Prism.’

The party was held in a blue-and-white striped tent outside the hall. The section leaders had been invited to mingle with the Great and the Good, but were far more interested in stuffing their faces with as much food and drink as fast as possible.

An eager-looking matron in chewstik-pink polyester immediately collared Davie Buckle, the timpanist. Davie’s face was as round and as blank as a satellite dish, and he wiled away long bars of rest playing patience on top of his kettle drums.

‘What d’you do?’ asked the matron skittishly.

‘I’m a basher.’ Davie grabbed two glasses of white and thrust one into her hand.

‘What’s a be-asher?’

‘I play the drums,’ said Davie, seizing a fistful of prawns in batter.

‘How exciting. I’d love to do that if I had the time. Percussion looks so easy.’

Accustomed to such inanities, Davie didn’t rise.

‘Why don’t you have any time?’ he asked.

‘Well, I have to look after Dick. My husband,’ she added by way of explanation, ‘he sponsored tonight’s concert, he’s in oil.’

‘What is he? A bleeding sardine?’ asked Davie and choked on his drink, because Abby had just stalked in looking absolutely sensational in a red body, no bra and the minutest wrap-over skirt.

‘I said a dress, not you oonderwear,’ said George furiously.

Peggy Parker was even crosser. She was livid about Abby’s plans to audition the choir and her suggestion that Peggy and several of her more august cronies, including Lindy Cardew, the wife of Rutminster’s planning officer, who all screeched like hungry seagulls, should stand down.

Nor had Peggy been charmed by the scrumpled-up photograph of Charlene, 44-22-35, playing the ‘Flowers of the Field’ on a slit-kilted Scotsman without the aid of bagpipes, which had landed in her lap in the middle of Mother Goose two nights ago.

She now ambushed Abby on her way to the bar.

‘Why d’you persist in rejecting my ge-owns. As musical director you should be projecting an image of femininity, graciousness and dignity.’

Abby was about to snap back that weighed down with Peggy Parker’s rhinestones, she’d hardly be able to lift her stick, but opting for tact, mumbled that she didn’t feel confident enough as a conductor to draw attention to herself so dramatically.

Mrs Parker swelled like a bullfrog.

‘You clearly feel confident enough to dispense with most of the choir.’

‘Must get a drink and circulate,’ Abby cut across her in mid-flow. ‘George only invited me this evening to brown-nose sponsors.’

And she was gone leaving Peggy Parker, furiously mouthing and appropriately pegged to the damp grass by four-inch scarlet heels.

The party was spilling out of the tent. Emerging into a starry evening lit by chestnut candles, Abby was waylaid.

‘Hi Abby, I’m Jison.’

Jison turned out to be a dodgy local car-dealer. After three-quarters of a bottle of Sancerre and a long look at Abby’s legs, he agreed to put ten thousand pounds into sponsoring Messiah, which the orchestra was performing in Cotchester Cathedral at the end of November, and which would later be transmitted on Christmas Eve.

‘Grite to drive one of the Ferraris up the aisle,’ Jason said excitedly.

‘Great,’ agreed Abby absent-mindedly because Viking had walked in.

He had skipped the rest of the afternoon’s rehearsal. It was late-night shopping and Blue had discovered him and Nugent fast asleep in one of the four-posters in Parker and Parker’s bedding department just in time for the concert. Whiter after yesterday’s excesses than his crumpled evening shirt, he was still surrounded by admiring women. Glancing at Abby, however, he raised his glass of red and wandered over.

‘You look glorious, sweetheart.’

Totally thrown by a compliment, Abby became ungracious.

‘Can’t say the same for you. Why in hell d’you drink so much?’

Viking laughed, making his bloodshot eyes narrower than ever.

‘If you’re as charming as I am, you get your glass filled up more often.’

To prove this, as he emptied his, waitresses converged from all sides to fill it up again.

‘This is Jason,’ Abby introduced the beadily hovering car-dealer. ‘I thought you’d given up drink anyway,’ she added reprovingly.

‘Not any more, Juno’s thrown me out.’

‘How come?’ asked Abby, trying desperately not to show how thrilled she was.

‘Juno wasn’t entirely pleased with the state in which I returned. The Prima Donna had been on the mobilé to her. And I left Nugent with her.’ Glancing down, he ran his fingers through the dog’s silky fur. ‘I hoped if they spent some time together, they might make friends.

‘Alas, Nugent escaped in disgosst and rolled and in disgosst at the state in which he returned home, Juno went out and bought a kennel and chained him up in the garden. I was also in the dog house when I got home, so I crawled out and joined Nugent, but he was a bit smelly, so we decided to walk home to The Bordello.’

Abby couldn’t help laughing.

‘But aren’t you miserable it’s over?’ she asked.

‘Not at all. Thanks, sweetheart.’ Gathering up a handful of sausage rolls from yet another lingering waitress, Viking fed them to Nugent.

‘Nugent certainly looks pleased.’

‘He is. Blue gave him a bath this morning.’

In fact the only casualty, went on Viking, was his BMW which had finally packed up.

‘You should invest in one of my Ferraris,’ said Jason, patronizingly. ‘Then you could really pull the birds.’

Viking replied with considerable hauteur, that he could pull the birds when he was riding a tricycle, and threw a goat-cheese ball at Lionel, who, after a quick bonk in the leader’s room, had waited until the party filled up to smuggle in Hilary, who had not been invited.

Why is Viking’s arrogance to die for and Lionel’s so repulsive? wondered Abby as she watched Lionel licking his teeth, fluffing up his ebony locks, squaring his shoulders as, with head erect, he awaited his stampede of fans.

He was delighted at first to be clobbered by Mrs Dick Standish but less amused when she asked him what was his daytime job.

‘You may see us looking glamorous in our tails,’ he said petulantly, ‘but you don’t realize how much practising, rehearsing, travelling and admin goes into each concert.’

‘At least you have job satisfaction.’

‘Not so as you’d know it,’ said Hilary glaring over at Abby, then bristling with disapproval, as Clare, who’d been smuggled in by Dixie, bounded up to them.

‘I say, Romeo and Juno have split up.’

‘That’s very stale buns,’ said Hilary crushingly.

‘But seriously exciting. Viking seems to be getting on rather well with our musical director, perhaps she’ll be the next swastika on his fuselage.’

Abby was trying not to feel wildly elated that Viking had stayed beside her so long. He was just telling her about a cottage by the lake, when she was accosted by a little bearded man in sandals with a pasty face and a straggling pony-tail, who immediately introduced himself as Peggy Parker’s son, Roger — ‘But everyone calls me Sonny,’ — the composer of the Eternal Triangle Suite. Had Abby fixed a date for the première?

Abby said she wasn’t sure. With George’s arrival, the schedule was all up in the air.

‘Is anyone recording your stuff?’ she asked him.

As Sonny shook his head, his pony-tail flew like a horse irritably swatting at flies.

‘After all the popular, easily digested fare around, people tend to find my music gritty and complex, but I am philosophical. The Marriage of Figaro was a disaster when it was first programmed.’

‘I was so moved,’ he went on earnestly, ‘to hear the toilets flushing during the Sibelius two nights ago, particularly in the last bars, that I have commenced a new work for full orchestra. I plan to provide sound effects of a rumbling train, pneumatic drills, people coughing, rustling toffee papers, cars back-firing,’ he ticked off the list with black-nailed fingers, ‘and finally a chorus of flushing toilets.’

Abby burst out laughing.

‘You must include the snoring of the Rutshire Butcher then.’

But, receiving a sharp kick on the ankle from Viking, she realized Sonny was utterly serious.

‘My goal is to prove great music can overcome any interruption.’

‘I look forward to hearing it,’ mumbled Abby.

Sonny was droning on, and Abby was praying he’d leave her and Viking alone, when Blue came over.

‘Who are all these spivs in sharp suits wandering around H.P. Hall sticking penknives into the brickwork?’ he said in a low voice.

‘George Hungerford’s henchmen,’ answered Viking.

‘I think so, too.’

‘George Hungerford seems very able,’ said Sonny pompously.

‘More like Cain, if you ask me,’ said Viking.

Abby was screwing up courage to ask Viking to show her the cottage by the lake when Mrs Standish rushed up.

‘Such fun to be a woman conductor, you did fritefly well.’

‘Why, thank you.’

‘My husband’s tonight’s sponsor.’

‘Oh, wow!’ Abby remembered George’s brief. ‘That’s so good of him, we’re so grateful.’

‘I just wanted to know,’ Mrs Standish went pinker than her dress, as she turned to Viking, ‘how you musician chappies address a female maestro?’

‘We call her “mattress”,’ said Viking idly, then seeing Abby’s lips tighten, he added softly, ‘because we’re all dying to lie on top of her.’

Abby tried and failed to look affronted.

‘I’m afraid my chariot of fire’s grounded’ went on Viking, ‘but I’ll walk you back to the Old Bell if you like.’ He ran a finger down Abby’s arm, setting her heart hammering.

‘I’ll give you a lift, Abby,’ said Jason proprietorially. ‘We can discuss things over a spot of dinner.’

Miserably remembering Hugo’s warning about getting involved with a member of the orchestra and George’s insistence that she chatted up sponsors, Abby accepted Jason’s invitation.

Popping into the Ladies on her way out she noticed someone had already scribbled joyfully on the walls: MR NUGENT ROLLS OK.

She could have wept, and even more so as Jason held open the door of his red Ferrari for her.

‘I’m definitely going to sponsor that Messiah. Who wrote it by the way?’

Nor did George Hungerford seem very impressed when she told him she had found a sponsor the following day.

‘Looks like a wide boy, better get it in writing.’

He then announced he had axed Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand at the end of next season because it was too expensive.

‘That’s defeatist,’ said Abby furiously.

‘We can’t afford the extras.’

‘If the orchestra were up to full strength,’ said Abby shirtily, ‘we wouldn’t have to spend so much on extras.’

She took a deep breath. ‘The musicians must have more money, to stop the exodus. Barry’s threatening to leave because he can’t pay the mortgage on the barn and the Child Support Agency.

‘Clarissa’s also looking around. She’s a really good player,’ pleaded Abby. ‘She’s gone for an audition with the LSO this afternoon, because she’s having sleepless nights worrying about the school fees.’

George watched John Drummond stretching luxuriously in his out-tray.

‘I have absolutely no sympathy with people who send their kids to pooblic school,’ he said coldly.

‘That’s rich, revoltingly rich,’ exploded Abby, ‘from someone who’s just bought a property up the road, which makes Buckingham Palace look like a rabbit hutch.’

‘We are not talking about me,’ George glared at her. ‘I didn’t go to pooblic school, never did me any harm.’

‘I wouldn’t put it to the vote.’

‘Anyway, I’m not a musician.’

‘That’s quite obvious. How can you replace the Symphony of a Thousand with Boléro, and Tchaik Five.’

‘Because you’ve reduced the choir to such a state of disarray,’ snapped George, ‘that I don’t imagine they can possible re-assemble by next season. Anyway Tchaik Five has a beautiful solo for Viking.’

Abby raised her fists to heaven. ‘Oh, we mustn’t forget Viking.’

‘There are worse things — Viking pulls in the punters. This orchestra is an endangered species, we need more booms on seats, more recordings, more touring, more Gala evenings.’

This brought him to Mrs Parker’s birthday concert at the end of July which coincided with the centenary of the store.

‘A treat in store?’ asked Abby sarcastically.

‘No,’ replied George, booting Drummond up the backside for attacking the brushed suede. The concert, he went on, was to be held in the grounds of Rutminster Towers, Peggy Parker’s neo-Gothic excrescence above the town.

‘You better provide umbrellas and clothes pegs to hold down the music in case of wind and rain,’ taunted Abby.

‘Mrs Parker has chosen the music,’ said George heavily. ‘William Tell, Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, The Polovtsian Dances.’

‘Omigod, why doesn’t Mrs Parker sing ‘Lady in Red’ to crown a really intellectual evening.’

Abby was goading George; she could see a muscle going in his clenched jaw, his squared-off nails whitening as he clutched the oak table, but he said quite mildly, ‘In case the Arts Council regard the repertoire as insufficiently adventurous, we’re going to programme Sonny Parker’s Eternal Triangle Suite after the interval.’

‘Jesus!’

‘As the function will attract a lot of media attention,’ went on George quickly, ‘Mrs Parker would like you to be appropriately dressed. She will give an extra one hundred thousand pounds to the orchestra if,’ George didn’t quite meet Abby’s already furious eyes, ‘Parker and Parker are allowed to dress and restyle you from top to toe. New gown, new make-up, new hair-do, jewels. You’ll enjoy it.’

‘I will not!’

Seeing the fury on Abby’s face, George busied himself lining up paperweights and files on his desk.

‘And it’s bluddy good pooblicity for the orchestra. Parker’s are planning a massive promotion. All the nationals’ll cover it. The Telegraph are planning a huge feature on the new re-vamped Abigail.’

‘So you’ve already agreed,’ Abby was outraged.

‘With your permission,’ said George placatingly. ‘We need the money, Abby, you’re a beautiful yoong lady and we all know you’ll look chumpian.’

Abby, who’d been feeling her age in the last month, was so startled that, like Viking yesterday, George had actually paid her a compliment, that she rolled over and reluctantly agreed.

‘The messing-up of a maestro,’ she said gloomily.

The instant he got her consent, George reverted to normal belligerence, and said brusquely that that would be all.

‘Last night’s concert was better,’ he opened the door for her. ‘But the symphony was still too long. Miss Priddock’s been handling complaints from people who missed their last trains and buses all morning.’

In a rage Abby went back to the conductor’s room and leafing through the Eroica pencilled in a huge ‘No’ beside every repeat sign, which meant a lot of work for the library, who had to change all the parts before the evening.

During the Brahms Second Piano Concerto in the first half, Abby noticed Viking smiling at a pretty redhead in the audience, and pointing to his watch to suggest a rendez-vous after the concert. Abby then proceeded to knock a quarter of an hour off the Eroica giving heart attacks to several ancient bass players, and everyone got their last trains.

For an orchestra whose hobby was grumbling, the RSO were delighted with George Hungerford. Socially maladroit, he was deficient in small talk, but he asked the right questions and listened carefully to all the answers, aware that a grievance aired is usually a grievance forgotten. He also recognized individual players in the building and then put up their photographs in the foyer, on the premise that the public ought to recognize them, too, and he invited them back to drinks at his splendid new house.

George would generate work, the RSO decided, and get them out of trouble. He certainly generated too much work for Miss Priddock and very tactfully provided her with an EA (an executive assistant, so Miss Priddock felt upgraded, too). The EA turned out to be a ravishing bimbo called Jessica who’d just returned with an all-over tan from the Seychelles. Nothing could more successfully have demolished the Berlin Wall between musicians and management, as male players, who hadn’t visited the top floor in years, plied Jessica with flowers, chocolates and invitations like love-sick schoolboys. El Creepo even got stuck up the tallest horse-chestnut tree in the park the day it was rumoured Jessica was sunbathing topless on the flat roof.

‘Isn’t George a ball of fire?’ exclaimed a besotted Miss Priddock, as she handed Abby her mail.

‘Fire’s the operative word,’ said Abby gloomily. ‘He’ll have me out of here the second my contract ends.’

Desperately tired and unhappy, she was grateful to have three weeks’ break at the end of June, while Ambrose, the Fat Controller, who was back from San Francisco, took over as guest conductor. But she dreaded the caballing when he, Miles and Lionel got together.

THIRTY

Abby found it impossible to recharge her batteries while staying at the Old Bell. She was too conscious of the RSO festering at the other end of town. Too proud to call Howie and say she wanted out, she decided to think positively and look at the cottage by the lake of which Viking had spoken. Longing to capture the fun and friendship of her days at the Academy, she telephoned Flora, who was uncharacteristically listless. Wiped out by Helen’s marriage to Rannaldini, she had found herself increasingly marking time and unable to concentrate at college.

‘And I’ve got another year to go.’

‘There’s a viola vacancy at the RSO,’ said Abby. ‘Why don’t you audition for it? Don’t say you know me, right? Then you could come and share a cottage with me down here.’

‘God, I’d like that, I’m fed up with London, particularly in this heat.’

‘How’s Marcus?’ asked Abby carefully, reluctant to confess how much she missed him.

‘I hardly see him, he’s so busy writing letters, taking in pupils and fending off their frightful mothers. He hasn’t got any time to practise, let alone come out in the evenings.’

‘Mothers are far too old for Marcus, goddamn cradle-snatchers.’ Abby was predictably outraged. ‘He’d find lots of teaching work down here, he could start with any soloist booked by the RSO. Perhaps he’d like to share this cottage as well.’

There was a long pause.

‘He might,’ said Flora. ‘I’m sorry, Abby, but you were such a bitch to him.’

‘I know, I was so uptight that night, I don’t know what got into me. I really miss him.’

‘Well, you’d better ring him then.’

‘Why don’t you get him to drive you down to the audition, then we can go and see the cottage afterwards.’

‘They weren’t at all enthusiastic at college,’ grumbled Flora, as Marcus turned off the M4. ‘Just because I’m missing a day’s rehearsal for the end-of-term concert. You’d have thought my career was more important.’

‘They probably can’t forgive you for not becoming a singer.’

‘That’s what they tell me every day,’ sighed Flora. ‘What d’you think about sharing a cottage with Abby?’

‘I don’t know. It would be nice to have somewhere I could practise. I started playing Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata at eleven o’clock last night and people on both sides started banging on the walls, but I’m not sure I can cope with Abby’s ego.’

In his shirt pocket was a letter which he already knew by heart.

Darling Markie,

Please forgive me, I’m sorry I chewed you out.

I miss you so much — both as a friend and as an advisor. We used to have such fun discussing repertoire…

Fun for her thought Marcus wryly, remembering the hysterics, the endless demands and the interrupted nights.

Along the Gloucestershire lanes, he noticed the trees were losing the tender green of early summer. The hedgerows were festooned with wilting dog-roses. Buttercups and dog daisies shrivelled amidst the newly mown hay.

‘Heaven after London,’ sighed Flora. ‘Maybe we could cope with Abby’s ego if there were two of us. You could do the night shift.’

‘I practise at night. Jesus, it’s hot.’

Marcus looked terribly white and had lost a lot of weight.

‘Let’s get an ice-cream and a bottle of wine,’ suggested Flora. Then, looking down at her sawn off T-shirt, frayed Bermudas and dusty bare feet, wondered, ‘Do you think I look smart enough for an audition?’

‘Frankly, no. We’ve got time to nip into Bath and buy you something.’

‘Do I really want this job if I’ve got to tart up?’

‘Yes, you need some fun.’ Marcus took his hand off the wheel and stroked her cheek.

‘How’s your mother?’ asked Flora.

‘OK.’

Flora’s second question was more difficult.

‘How’s Rannaldini getting on with Tabitha?’

‘She’s in America for a year working in some racing yard.’

Marcus didn’t tell Flora, Helen had caught Rannaldini leering at Tabitha undressing through a two-way mirror.

‘I’ve got a new viola joke,’ he said to distract her. ‘How many viola players does it take to wallpaper a room?’

‘How many?’

‘Three — if you slice them thinly.’

Candidates at auditions are judged 70 per cent on their playing, 30 per cent on their ability to fit into the relevant section. The right attitude was needed, a core of hardness to cope with the cut and thrust of orchestral life. You couldn’t be too sweet or likely to cry if you were shouted at. Neither shrinking violets nor violists were encouraged.

Auditions could be very acrimonious. The leader of the orchestra could favour one candidate, the section leader another, the musical director or a member of the board another. Steve Smithson opposed anyone from abroad on principle. But no-one felt remotely enthusiastic that morning about the colourless bunch struggling through solos from Telemann’s Viola Concerto. They seemed to encapsulate all the jokes about the dumbness and dreariness of viola players.

The boardroom clock edged towards five past one.

‘Flora Seymour’s late,’ said Miles, looking at the last name on the list.

‘Give her another five minutes,’ said El Creepo, the section leader, who dreaded the prospect of re-advertising the job.

‘If she can’t turn up on time there’s no point in employing her,’ said Lionel, who was longing to share a bottle of chilled white wine in the long grass with Hilary.

They were the only people left except the accompanist who was thinking of the marmite-and-scrambled-egg sandwiches in tin foil at the bottom of her music case. It was a measure of the lacklustre nature of the morning’s performances that none of the other section leaders had bothered to stay for more than a few minutes.

‘OK, that’s it. Sorry, Flora,’ Miles ran a red Pentel through her name.

‘Flora’s the one who’s sorry,’ said a clear piercingly distinctive voice. ‘I can’t even pretend there was a pile-up on the motorway. We stopped in Bath to buy suitable clothes to be auditioned in, and I forgot the time. I’m really sorry.’

Miles was the first one to speak.

‘It’s absolutely no problem at all.’

‘Can I get you a glass of water or a cup of tea before you start?’ asked Lionel.

‘Would you like five minutes to freshen up and unwind?’ said El Creepo.

There was nearly a pile-up on Rutminster High Street as word got round and musicians on their way to the Shaven Crown did a speeded-up U-turn worthy of Benny Hill. Flora proceeded to play with such insouciance and joie de vivre in every note that the board room soon filled up.

Apart from Cherub, who crawled under people’s legs and chairs and ended up to his horror, practically sitting on the Fat Controller’s knee, latecomers had to lurk in the passage.

Flora’s new coffee-coloured silk shirt fell so charmingly over her wrists as she romped through the first movement of the Walton Concerto, and her short fawn suede skirt clung so enticingly to her dancing hips that afterwards even Simon Painshaw and the Fat Controller were making thumbs-up signs to El Creepo and Miles to offer her the job.

One of the reasons George Hungerford had taken over the RSO was because he loved music. He had been dismayed to find admin was taking up 95 per cent of his time. Leaving H.P. Hall at nearly midnight yesterday he had taken his soaring in-tray home but had fallen asleep at the kitchen table over a large whisky and a forkful of roll mops, and had had to bring the in-tray back untouched this morning.

Coming out of his office, he found the passage crowded with musicians peering in through the boardroom door with the rapt attention of a pack of hounds watching Basil Brush on television.

Then he recognized his favourite piece of music, Elgar’s In the South overture. In amazement, as he stood on his toes to see into the jam-packed board room, he realized a young girl with a shiny dark red bob was playing Elgar’s transcription of the piece with a fresh and exquisite sound. Her eyes were closed in anguish, her head shaking almost in bewilderment at the dark, sad, liltingly beautiful tune pouring out of her viola.

George felt all the uncontrollable knee-jerk reactions, the sudden catch of breath, hair rising on the back of the neck, tears swamping the eyes. Hastily turning to the window, through which was wafting the sweet lemony smell of lime flowers, so no-one could see how moved he was, he was overwhelmed by the emptiness of his life since Ruth had left him. He was brought back to earth by a most unusual round of applause.

‘That was absolutely beautiful,’ said El Creepo, blowing his nose.

‘Beautiful,’ agreed Lionel, after hastily checking Hilary wasn’t within earshot. ‘What are you working on at the Academy at the moment?’

‘Mostly singing Eve. We’re doing The Creation as an end-of-term concert.’

‘D’you have to strip off?’ shouted Dixie from the back.

Flora laughed. ‘I’m allowed to keep on my fig-leaf.’

‘Going to give us a demo?’ asked Dixie.

‘That’s quite enough,’ snapped Lionel. ‘Trust you to lower the tone, Dixie.’

‘I only wanted Flora to lower her fig-leaf.’

‘I would like to ask Miss Seymour,’ Miles glared at Dixie, ‘why she wants to play in an orchestra, and the RSO in particular.’

For once Flora seemed lost for words as her eyes ran over the men staring at her, then she beamed from ear to ear.

‘I guess I’d like some fun.’

Everyone beamed back.

Much too sexy for her own or anyone else’s good, thought George.

In the end, the RSO offered Flora six months’ trial.

‘In case either of us don’t like each other,’ said El Creepo, ‘which is most unlikely.’

‘I’m afraid we can only offer you thirteen thousand a year,’ said Miles apologetically.

‘You couldn’t make it thirteen and a half?’ asked Flora. ‘I’ll probably have to pay back my grant.’ Then, shaken out of her habitual cool, added, ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am.’

So were the men in the orchestra. Even the Celtic Mafia charged round in jubilation saying, ‘She’s got the job, she’s got the job.’

Abby was jubilant, too, because she’d set the thing up.

‘I’ve organized chilled French champagne, Scotch salmon, alligator pears and fresh berries,’ she told Marcus and Flora, ‘We’ll have a picnic by the lake and then we’ll go and look at the cottage.’

In the third week in June, Abby, Marcus and Flora moved into Woodbine Cottage which lurked like the palest red fox cub, peering out of its woodland undergrowth. It was situated two hundred and fifty yards from the lake, up a rough track, which would become a running stream in wet weather. They would have difficulty getting out if it snowed, but at least they wouldn’t be gawped at by locals or tourists wandering round the lake.

The cottage itself was early nineteenth century and quite enchanting. Pale pink roses arched over the rickety front gate, pink geraniums in pots leant out of every window and a stream hurtled under the mossy flagstones that led up to the pale green front door. Clematis, white roses and honeysuckle swarmed up the soft red walls. The front garden was crowded with pinks, snapdragons and tall crimson hollyhocks. Behind the cottage a lawn bounded by ancient apple trees sloped up into soaring woods which protected the cottage from north and east winds. Beyond the front gate, red and white cows grazed in a wild flower meadow rising gently to poplars on the horizon.

‘You won’t get much sun until midday,’ the owner, a sweet widow, told them apologetically.

‘Suits us,’ said Flora, ‘we’re not early risers.’

‘You will be now you’ve joined the RSO,’ said Abby firmly.

Inside, the cottage, to Abby’s delight, had adequate plumbing, a modern kitchen with a Cotswold stone floor and a big scrubbed table. The drawing-room had a huge mirror in which she could practise conducting, and plenty of shelves for scores and books. Upstairs were two largish bedrooms looking over the meadow, a bathroom and an attic bedroom under the eaves.

Marcus was worried the place was so isolated. With every move he had to find a doctor and locate the nearest casualty department. He would have to make doubly sure that he always had spare inhalers and a pre-packed syringe to inject himself.

But the real plus was that, under a spreading chestnut tree, in the top left-hand corner of the back garden, had been built a studio. This had a shower, a 100, a fridge in which he could put his pillows to kill the dust mites, plenty of room for a bed and the Steinway on which he had just managed to keep up the payments.

‘My late husband was a sculptor, who liked to work at night,’ the sweet widow told Marcus, ‘I like to think of another artist living here.’

With a studio, Marcus could also take in private pupils without bothering the others, and retreat to avoid the dust and fluff bound to be created by Abby’s and Flora’s sloppy housework and the two black-and-white kitten brothers, Sibelius and Scriabin, which Abby had rushed off and acquired from the nearest rescue kennels the moment they moved in.

‘Two for joy, they’re just like magpies,’ said Flora in ecstasy, as the kittens with thunderous purring buried their faces in a plate of boiled chicken.

‘Can you imagine poor Schubert moving twenty-four times. I’m exhausted after a day of it,’ added Flora.

There was still masses of sorting out, but she wandered off to the kitchen returning with a bottle of Moët and three glasses. Abby raised a disapproving eyebrow. It was only three o’clock.

‘I’m not going to make a habit of it,’ said Flora airily, ‘but it is a special day.’

‘We are going to introduce a new regime,’ insisted Abby virtuously, ‘no pop music, no TV, we’ll go for long walks, read aloud and discuss music and ideas in the evening.’

‘No television, that’s a bit steep,’ cried Flora in alarm. ‘What about Men Behaving Badly, Blind Date, and Keeping Up Appearances?’

‘You’ll soon get used to it.’ Abby raised her glass. ‘To us.’

‘We better start making our own wine,’ muttered Flora. ‘Go and jump on a few elderberries, Marcus.’

‘And make our own amusements,’ said Marcus, and he and Flora sat down to bash out a four-handed version of Schubert’s Marche Militaire on the ancient upright in the drawing-room.

‘Abby’s clearly going to take rural life very seriously,’ giggled Flora. ‘She’s already bought galoshes, gloves, a rain hat and a Dryzabone for country walks.’

‘She can count me out,’ sighed Marcus, ‘I can’t do more than forty yards at the moment.’

Wandering out into the back garden, clutching a still purring Scriabin, the browning lawn scratching her bare feet like horsehair, Abby jumped as she heard the glorious horn call from Don Juan echoing through the woods. For a second she thought the others, bored of duets, had put on a record. But no-one could mistake that radiance and clarity. It was Viking practising for next week’s concert. There it was again, hardly muffled by the leaves.

The Celtic Mafia’s Bordello, rented so they could play music and hell-raise as loudly as they liked, lay on the other side of the lake. Perhaps they could start giving Woodbine Cottage dinner parties round the big kitchen table. Was Viking putting out signals playing Don Juan on her first day? Perhaps he didn’t know she had moved in. She must get some change of address cards printed, she thought with a shiver of excitement.

That night she fell asleep instantly for the first time in months, soothed by the sound of the stream under her window rushing down to join the lake.

Returning to work after her three weeks’ break was like going back to prison. Miles and Lionel, who’d chiefly employed Flora to put her nose out of joint, couldn’t wait to break the news of her appointment.

‘We would have waited for you to OK her,’ said Miles smugly, ‘but she’s so talented, we decided to snap her up.’

‘The Academy says she’s got a fantastic voice,’ even Lionel was looking quite moony, ‘which is useful if we ever need an understudy.’

‘What’s her name?’ Abby was idly flipping through her post.

‘Flora Seymour,’ Miles laughed heartily. ‘We all want to see more of Flora.’

‘Georgie Maguire’s daughter,’ said Abby, opening a typed envelope with a London postmark.

‘I said Seymour not Maguire.’

‘Still Georgie’s daughter.’

‘You sure you’ve got the right girl?’

‘Quite,’ said Abby with a malicious smile. ‘Flora and I were at the Academy together. She auditioned while I was away on vacation, right? So I couldn’t be accused of bias. She’s living in the cottage I’ve bought by the lake.’

‘Bought a cottage,’ spluttered Lionel. ‘You’re planning a long stay with the RSO?’

‘Sure am,’ crowed Abby. ‘Get a look of this.’

It was confirmation from Howie Denston that Megagram wanted to record all Fanny Mendelssohn’s music and all four of Winifred Trapp’s Harp Concertos with Abby and the RSO.

‘Who’s Winifred Trapp?’ asked Miles scornfully.

‘It’s pronounced Vinifred,’ said Abby rudely. ‘She’s a terrific nineteenth-century Swiss composer. She had to stop home and care for her elderly parents, so her oeuvre was only performed by family and friends, which meant she used a very small orchestra, which means Jackboot Hungerford can cut down on extras. I discovered her when I was living with Rodney in Lucerne. She makes marvellous use of yodelling and cowbells.’

‘Yet another hall-emptier,’ snapped Miles, but even he couldn’t argue with a fat record contract.

Wandering back to her dressing-room, Abby bumped into Viking and her heart stopped. His lean normally pale face was tanned a warm gold. Sunbathing with his hair drenched in lemon juice had turned it nearly white. He was wearing a sea-green polo shirt and dirty white shorts.

Abby couldn’t resist telling him she had heard him last night.

Viking looked alarmed.

‘Don’t tell anyone you heard me practising — it’s terrible for my image.’

On an ego trip, Abby had to break the news about Winifred Trapp and Fanny Mendelssohn.

‘It’s nearly the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Fanny’s death.’

‘Fanniversary,’ Viking grinned broadly.

‘Must you trivialize everything?’

‘I have a theory about obscure repertoire,’ said Viking, ‘If it’s onplayed, there’s very good reason. It’s either onplayable or onotterably bad. If you record it, however, you get a reputation for brilliance and innovation because there’s nothing to compare it with.’

‘You would have an utterly defeatist attitude.’ Abby flounced off in a fury.

To save money, it was decided to run a joint Mendelssohn and Trapp series in the late autumn, then Megagram could perhaps be leant on to pay for the rehearsals. There was just time to slot this change of repertoire into next season’s smart brochure, which had a picture of Abby on the front.

George had also effected a saving of thirty thousand pounds a year by sacking the marketing manager, who’d kept coming up with fatuous ideas about laser beams and back projections and the orchestra playing in their national costumes to prove how international they were.

Abby returned from her holiday to find Clarissa had left as threatened — not to London — but to join Hugo and the CCO. Abby felt betrayed and as though she had lost an ally. But she wasted no time in bringing in a new Principal Cellist, called Dimitri, who refused to be parted from his cello because it was the only possession he had managed to smuggle out of a Russian Labour Camp. Speaking precious little English he had difficulty getting a job and was as thin as a skeleton. But after spending a couple of nights in the attic bedroom at Woodbine Cottage and playing chamber music with Flora and Marcus, he soon regained his confidence. Although he cried everytime the orchestra played The Great Gate of Kiev, he added wonderful gravitas and a great deep Russian sound to the cello section. As a result, Dimitri adored Abby and was horrified by the orchestra’s deep disrespect for her.

Despite Miles’s and Lionel’s belief that it would put Abby’s nose out of joint to employ Flora, Abby liked pretty women in the orchestra, as long as they played well. She had therefore spiced up the back of the violins with an enchanting Japanese girl called Noriko. Noriko couldn’t pronounce her ‘L’s and kept everyone in stitches ordering River and Bacon at the Shaven Crown and suggesting the Steel Elf, who was having trouble paying her mortgage since Viking moved out, ‘should take in a roger’.

Viking and Juno were both too proud to make it up, but romance-watchers had noticed Juno definitely making big bluey-green eyes at George Hungerford.

‘That would be a dangerous liaison,’ said Dixie gloomily, ‘she would have us all out in a trice.’

Flora’s first rehearsal with the RSO at the beginning of July was greeted with a chorus of wolf-whistles. She had tied back her newly washed hair with a grey ribbon, she wore no make-up on her gold freckled skin. Her legs in grey linen shorts were almost chunky. But there was an undeniable sexuality about her, perhaps because she was totally lacking in new-girl nerves. Used to playing solo at college, she attacked every piece with vigour, and if she came in too early, or played a wrong note, she burst out laughing, thus giving confidence to other newcomers like Jenny and Noriko who were too shy of scorn even to practise in public.

Flora took Foxie, her puppet-fox mascot, everywhere with her, reducing the nearby players to fits of giggles by making him conduct with her pencil, or putting his paws over his ears and shaking his head at moments of discord or stress. Flora also chattered to everyone and was absurdly generous.

In her second week when they were waiting for Abby who’d been delayed by some management wrangle, Flora plied her own section and the surrounding players with lemon sherbets. They were about to rehearse the Valse des Fleurs, which required a harpist, and even contained an important harp cadenza.

Harpists are often regarded as something of a joke in orchestras. But, if the RSO laughed at Miss Parrott, they also loved and admired her. A middle-aged spinster with piled-up strawberry-pink hair, she always wore high heels and very bright colours: ‘If you’re in the shop window for a long tayme you tend to fade so Ay like to look colourful,’ and rose above the orchestra as dignified as her gold harp, which she plucked at with long red fingers.

Miss Parrott looked on and missed nothing, passing the time when she wasn’t playing knitting brightly coloured scarves for her favourites in the orchestra. Blue and Viking had two each. She always had a beta blocker and a glass of sherry before concerts, and liked to play her harp beside the flutes, complaining bitterly if ever she were relegated to the back of the Second Violins.

Although Miss Parrott claimed: ‘My feet are danglin’ from the shelf,’ she had no shortage of male admirers to mend plugs and tyres for her and carry her harp in and out of concert halls. Finally she was an inveterate moonlighter and, that very evening, after she’d dispatched Valse des Fleurs in the first half at Rutminster, would be belting over to Cotchester to play Debussy’s Dances Sacres et Profanes with the CCO.

Having finished her lemon sherbet, she asked Flora if she could have another one.

‘Goodness, Miss Parrott,’ piped up Cherub, ‘you’ve got a big suck.’

‘If you were ten years older, and Ay were ten years younger, Ay’d show you, young man,’ said Miss Parrott calmly.

Shouts of laughter greeted this as poor Cherub went as red as his bass drum.

As a new girl, Flora had been placed behind Fat Isobel, beside Militant Moll and in front of Juno and Hilary, none of whom were at all enthusiastic about her arrival.

Viking, who usually claimed droit de seigneur over any pretty girl who joined the orchestra, had noticed Flora’s bitten nails at the audition and the occasional flicker of desolation on her face, and didn’t believe she was as bonny and blithe as she appeared.

Writing: ‘Will you have a drink with me after this?’ on a paper dart, he chucked it in her direction.

Alas, the dart flew over Flora’s head and fluttered down onto the massive bosom of Fat Isobel who, still disappointed at being passed up during Viking’s erotic bonanza on the bus to Starhampton, swung round nodding frantically in acceptance.

‘Jesus, I’ll have to empty Oddbins,’ muttered an appalled Viking.

‘Isobel’s got lovely skin,’ protested Miss Parrott kindly.

‘Pity there’s so much of it,’ sighed Viking.

The rest of the Celtic Mafia were still crying with laughter when Abby arrived.

‘Quiet please, let’s get started,’ she said briskly. ‘Where are Clare and Dixie?’

‘Still in the pub,’ said Juno primly.

‘Shall I go and get them?’ piped up Flora eager to escape for a quick one.

‘Noriko can go,’ said Abby, adding pointedly, ‘she doesn’t drink.’

She couldn’t help feeling wildly jealous that Flora had been accepted so easily and had this gift of making people love her. Everyone wanted to play chamber music with her, the telephone rang the whole time at the cottage, her pigeon hole at H.P. Hall was filled with notes.

I must start playing the violin again, thought Abby fretfully, so people want to play chamber music with me.

‘It’s only because Flora’s new,’ Abby overheard Juno saying bitchily to Hilary. ‘They’ll soon get bored of her.’

THIRTY-ONE

Rutminster was gripped by a heatwave. Plans for holding Piggy Parker’s sixtieth-birthday concert inside or providing the orchestra with a canopy were shelved as the ground cracked, the huge domed trees in the grounds of Rutminster Towers shed their first yellow leaves and Mrs Parker repeatedly cursed her mother for conceiving her in a Ramsgate boarding-house in October rather than in September — which meant her birthday fell at the end of July, by which time the roses had gone over.

Short of glueing back every petal, the only answer was to bus in furiously clashing bedding plants from Parker’s Horticultural Emporium. Lorry-loads of electric-blue hydrangeas and scarlet petunias were racing armies of caterers up the drive, as the orchestra struggled in for an early rehearsal and to check the timing of the fireworks in William Tell, before the heat became too punishing.

Rutminster Towers itself stood in all its neo-Gothic glory, surrounded by a formal garden and parkland, overlooking the River Fleet. A platform for orchestra and choir had been set up on the river’s edge. Bronzed workmen putting up a large red-and-white striped VIP tent eyed Flora as she paddled and splashed water over a panting Mr Nugent.

Mrs Parker was frantic everything should go well. As a year ago, a pleasure launch of Hoorays playing pop music and drunkenly yelling ‘Hellair’ had disrupted Panis Angelicus, she was personally prepared to dam the river with her vast bulk to stop anyone sailing upstream during the concert.

She had, however, graciously invited the ladies of the orchestra to hang their dresses in the Long Gallery.

‘Is that a genuine Picasso?’ asked Nellie, as she peered in awe into the le-ounge.

‘No, no,’ giggled Candy, ‘look on the back. It says “Do Not Freeze, This Side Up”.’

‘Admiring my Picarso,’ said a loud voice behind them. ‘It was a silver wedding-gift from my late hubby.’

‘She’s even matched her grand piano exactly to the panelling,’ Clare told Dixie as she returned from the house, ‘and every piece of ghastly furniture is for sale.’

‘You don’t think an old bag like Piggy Porker would pass up an opportunity for commercial gain,’ said Dixie. ‘You could probably buy that oak tree for twenty grand.’

‘I’ll pay Sonny twenty grand to stay away,’ said Clare. ‘He’s been so preoccupied with his première he even forgot to buy Mumsy a birthday card.’

Today was also the birthday of Ninion, Second Oboe and oppressed partner of Militant Moll.

‘Just proves what utter crap astrology is,’ sneered Carmine Jones getting his trumpet out of its case, ‘when a thug like Piggy Porker and a wimp like Ninion have birthdays on the same day.’

Ninion ignored the crack, but his hands shook as he read his and Mrs Parker’s horoscope in the Rutminster Echo, which was part owned by Mrs Parker anyway, and which said it would be a good day for fireworks.

Underneath his mild blinking, field-mouse exterior, Ninion was hopping mad. Second Oboe often doubles up as cor anglais, but Knickers and Abby had humiliatingly not thought he was good enough to play the long ravishing cor anglais solo in William Tell, and brought in Carmine Jones’s wife, Catherine, as an extra.

Militant Moll should have been pleased a woman had been given the job. Instead she berated Ninion for not standing up for his rights.

‘You are quite capable of playing that solo, Nin. Why d’you let people push you around? Catherine Jones is a drip not to have left Carmine years ago.’

Moll was taking Ninion to a woman composers’ workshop in Bath as a birthday treat. Ninion brooded; he was fed up with women.

The surrounding fields were silvered with dew as the orchestra tuned up, but no breeze ruffled the forget-me-nots languishing on the river-bank. As Flora returned a dripping Nugent to Viking, she breathed in a heady scent. At first she thought it came from a nearby lime tree. Then she realized it was Blue’s aftershave, which he never wore normally, and that he had put on a ravishing new duck-egg-blue shirt. Blue was so handsome, quiet and dependable, but there was a sadness about him. Flora wondered if he were gay and secretly in love with Viking. He never had any women around.

‘God, it’s baking,’ said Viking, who was sharing his breakfast of a pork pie and a Kit-Kat with Mr Nugent. ‘Oh, go away,’ he snapped at Fat Isobel, who’d been panting after him like a St Bernard since he’d taken her out for a drink.

Flora looked up at the house. ‘How the hell did Piggy Porker get permission to build such an excrescence in such a beautiful park?’ she asked ‘Every councillor has his price,’ explained Viking contemptuously. ‘All the fat cats on Rutminster Council, who you’ll see guzzling champagne this evening probably received a nice nest-egg in a Swiss bank or holiday home in Barbados. I wonder if Alan Cardew, the planning officer, would enjoy knowing that his wife Lindy is currently being knocked off by Carmine Jones.’

‘How could she? He’s loathsome. Imagine that brickred sneering face kissing you.’

‘That’s why Lindy was so livid when Abby sacked her from the choir. She can’t pretend to be sloping off to choir practice any more.’

‘All right, let’s get started,’ Abby had arrived, looking deathly pale after a sleepless night wondering whether to do a runner rather than be made over by Peggy’s beauticians. She was wearing a dark red vest and black bicycle shorts, and her lips tightened as she saw Flora gossiping with Viking.

The orchestra quickly whizzed through William Tell. Catherine Jones wasn’t turning up until the concert, so Ninion had to deputize for her, which made him crosser than ever. The fireworks would be let off after the trumpet fanfare during the rousing finale, which everyone knew because it had once been The Lone Ranger’s signature tune.

Fortunately the electrician who’d spent the morning hammering Roman candles, rockets and Catherine wheels onto posts liked music and knew exactly when to start the display.

‘Miss Rosen, we’re ready for you. I’m Crystelle by the way,’ called out a Parker beautician, who hovered, smiling like a crocodile. Her make-up was so thick you could have chucked rocks at it.

For a second Abby stared down at her, terrified and proud, Sidney Carton at the scaffold. Then she gathered up her sticks and her scores.

‘Please don’t ruin her, she’s so beautiful,’ called out Flora as Crystelle frogmarched Abby back to the house.

‘You need your eyes tested, Flora,’ said Carmine Jones nastily.

‘And you need a face transplant,’ shouted Flora.

The orchestra roared with laughter; singly most of them were too frightened to take on Carmine, whose face was now engorged with rage like a slice of black pudding.

It was now time for Sonny to take a last rehearsal of his Eternal Triangle for orchestra, cow bells and yodeller. A little man with a very large ego, Sonny (or rather Mumsy) had paid for several extra rehearsals. Many contemporary composers prefer to be programmed with other twentieth-century music. Not Sonny.

‘I’m not frightened of comparison with the great masters.’

Crash, bang, plink, plonk, went the orchestra. Sonny, a hopeless conductor, looked as though he were swimming through deep water and occasionally spearing a jelly fish.

Nor did he know anything about music, but fancying Viking, whose body was turning dark gold above his dirty white shorts, called out: ‘Four bars after twenty, Horns, marked gestopft. Could you play it on your own?’

‘Gestopft’ means putting the right hand up the bell of the horn to produce a muted buzzing sound. Viking, however, muttered to his section, ‘OKlads, play flat out.’

The next moment five horns blared out making two nearby pigeons and the rest of the orchestra jump out of their skins.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ spluttered Hilary, who hadn’t imagined she’d need her industrial ear plugs in the open air.

Sonny, however, was in raptures.

‘Splendid, Viking, splendid.’ He thrust forward a circle formed by his first finger and thumb.

‘Nor does the silly bugger realize that the trumpet’s been transposed into the wrong key by the copyist for the last three rehearsals,’ said Viking scornfully.

‘He’s been too busy jogging so he can rush up onto the platform in time to catch the applause,’ said Blue, shaking water out of his tuning slide.

Sonny had also been active organizing a claque of comely youths from the soft-furnishing department to provide a standing ovation.

‘Now, really clap your hands, boys, shout, “Bravo” and stamp your feet.’

Sonny’s favourite, however, was rumoured to be a plump young man with soft brown curls in all the right places, who was going to dress in lederhosen and provide the yodelling tonight.

At ten o’clock, by which time the temperature had soared into the nineties, the orchestra were released, many of them to sunbathe so they would look good in their summer uniform of white dinner-jackets, or for women, dresses in a single colour, whose skirts must fall at least nine inches below the knee.

As Rutshire was playing Yorkshire on the cricket ground next to the cathedral, Old Henry and Old Cyril found a couple of deckchairs. As he opened a can of beer, Old Cyril thanked God for the millionth time that Viking and Blue had carried him through his audition.

Having spent the morning on the telephone shouting at his builder who had omitted to put a staircase in a new office block: ‘Now, that’s one I really can’t lie about, George,’ George Hungerford had also hoped to slope off to the cricket ground to cheer on his home county.

Coming out of his office, however, he had found Eldred, the First Clarinet, in tears. They were so badly in debt that his wife had left him.

‘You better tell me about it,’ sighed George, going back into his office.

Carmine Jones’s face grew even redder as he pleasured Lindy Cardew, wife of Rutminster’s planning officer, on her peach nylon sheets.

‘I’ll get you back into the choir, Lindy, if it kills me.’

Poor Catherine Jones had no time to practise her cor anglais, she had been far too busy washing and ironing Carmine’s dress-shirt and getting suspicious-looking grass stains out of his white tuxedo, and sobbing over the primrose-yellow taffeta dress with huge puffed sleeves which had been fashionable the year the Princess of Wales had married Prince Charles, the same year she had married Carmine. Apart from a black polyester shift to wear to winter concerts, she had not had a new dress since then.

Tonight’s outfit had to be one colour. Cutting the orange fire bird made of sequins from the yellow taffeta bodice as she shoved baked beans down fractious children, Catherine had jagged a large hole in the bodice. At this rate, she wouldn’t have time to wash her hair. As Carmine was pathologically stingy he had ordered Catherine to come home immediately after William Tell to relieve the babysitter and not even stay for drinks in the interval. Catherine fingered a large bruise on her left cheek and hoped make-up would hide it.

The soloist in Liszt’s Piano Concerto that evening was Benny Basanovich, a half-French, half-Russian pig, who could only play loudly. He therefore chose pieces (and women, said Viking) where he could bang away. Good looking in a brutal fashion, Benny had thick black ram’s curls falling to his shoulders, a hooked nose, slanting eyes beneath thick brown eyebrows and a big, light red mouth. A Shepherd Denston artist, he’d always been wildly jealous of Abby because she was more famous than him, but he got much more work than he deserved because Howie fancied him.

After a brief telephone call to Lionel, both men decided that Lionel would follow Benny and bring in the orchestra as necessary, and that everyone would ignore Abby.

By two o’clock, the beauticians had Abby corsetted, dressed, made-up and coiffeured. She was then subjected to an interview and a long photographic shoot with the Daily Telegraph, followed by a press conference and photo-call in the burning heat.

‘Can’t I even take off my panty hose?’ pleaded Abby.

‘Certainly not, Luvlilegs have taken a full-page ad in the programme,’ said Crystelle, shutting up such subversion with a huge powder-puff slap in Abby’s face. ‘Always remember to brush powder upwards, it raises the hairs on your face and gives you a far livelier expression.’

‘Don’t you look a poppet,’ cried Peggy Parker in ecstasy. ‘What a transformation.’

Peggy herself, already made-up and wearing a white kimono over her massive corseted bulk, looked like an all-in wrestler. On the window-sill, as more dark blue lines were drawn under her lashes, Abby noticed a gift-wrapped present.

‘To Abigail Rosen, Thank you indeed for a very pleasant concert, sincerely, Peggy Parker,’ said the accompanying card.

There was one for Benny, too.

Out of the window Abby could see a beautiful sunken garden, crammed with red, white and blue rock plants. She wanted to dive into the lily pond in the centre, crack open her aching head and never wake again. Catching sight of a dreadful drag queen in the mirror, she gave a moan of anguish. But Abby had never lacked courage, one hundred thousand pounds for the RSO was worth twelve hours of humiliation.

The sweet heady smell of honeysuckle and tobacco plants grew stronger with the coming of night, mingling with the hundred different ‘fragrances’ of Mrs Parker’s invited guests who had paid one hundred and fifty pounds for their tickets and hospitality throughout the evening, and who were now noisily spilling out of the VIP tent. Most of the women had streaked hair and wore a lot of make-up which looked better as the light faded. They enjoyed a concert, they knew the tunes from Classic FM and it was such fun to look at each other’s jewels and clothes and see who’d been asked.

They all longed for a word with George Hungerford, whose manly, attractively rumpled face was always looking out from the financial pages, but sadly he was being monopolized by their husbands, hoping perhaps that some of his huge success might rub off on them.

George, in fact, was in a foul temper. He had somehow mopped up Eldred and persuaded him to play, but he was fed up with being bossed around by Peggy Parker. He had also just had a frightful row with Benny, who had refused to come out of his dressing-room and give a ‘very pleasant’ concert to anyone unless he was paid cash up front.

The orchestra were nearly all in their seats. Miss Parrott had availed herself of Peggy Parker’s offer of ge-owns at trade. A symphony of harebell-blue tulle with a mauve-blue beehive to match, she smiled across at Dimitri, the Principal Cellist, who started the concert.

Knickers was in a terrible twist, again, running around in his shirt sleeves, livid that he’d had to hand over his white dinner-jacket to Francis the Good Loser, who’d brought tails by mistake. Francis had also forgotten his black socks, and rectified the mistake by smothering his ankles with Old Henry’s black boot polish.

Catherine Jones was late. As a Second Oboe wasn’t needed in William Tell, Ninion propped up the bar and festered. He wasn’t going to help them out if Cathie didn’t show up.

At half-past seven on the dot, Mrs Parker, resplendant in a diamond tiara and red bustier with matching organdie skirt, swept down the hill in a white open-topped Bentley. Beside her, a third of her size, but radiating equal complacency, sat Sonny in a white silk tunic. With his lank dark hair loose round his silly beaky face, he looked like a parrot peering out of its baize cloth.

Dismounting from their triumphal car, Mrs Parker and Sonny were clapped onto the rostrum by the audience led by Sonny’s claque from soft furnishing.

They were followed by Abby. Clad in an electric-blue lurex shirtwaister which fell to mid-calf, she was shod in electric-blue shoes, whose four-inch heels kept falling into the cracks in the ground. Due to the tightness of her skirt it took her three goes to climb onto the platform. She was bowed down by vast rubies at her neck, ears and wrists. Her hair was bouffant, lacquered and blonded, her make-up thick as a raddled old tart in the early evening sunshine.

The orchestra, ably led by Lionel, were clutching their sides.

Flora was torn by horror and helpless laughter. Oh poor Abby. Marcus who loved Abby was absolutely furious; he wanted to punch Mrs Parker and George on the nose. He was also having increasing trouble breathing because of the heat, dust and pollen, and because the chauffeurs were keeping their engines going to enjoy the air-conditioning as they waited in the car-park.

Viking who had not forgotten the beauty of Abby’s figure in a red body-stocking was equally appalled.

‘Jesus,’ he muttered to Blue, ‘she looks like Michael Heseltine in drag.’

‘Joan of Arc burnt at the stake did not do more for France than I have for this orchestra,’ hissed Abby to the First Violins as she passed.

‘Throw a few faggots round the base then,’ murmured Lionel to Bill Thackery, the co-leader.

‘Plenty of those around,’ said Bill, who was very straight, glaring at Sonny’s claque dominating the third row.

‘Well done Abby, you look chumpion,’ lied George.

Having countenanced this transformation, he had to support it publicly, but was secretly horrified.

Mrs Parker and Sonny had already mounted the platform. Vast and tiny, a telephone box beside a small snowman, they were joined by an electric-blue beanpole, and the photographers went berserk.

‘Peggy’s done it again, have to hand it to her, the gal’s got style,’ chorused her friends.

At a distance, Abby had a certain splendour like the Statue of Liberty.

Mrs Parker then introduced the ‘new look’ Parker and Parker had especially created for Abigail Rosen.

‘Abigail’s coiffeure has been softly styled and highlightened by Guiseppe.’

Clap, clap, clap, clap, went the audience.

‘Maquillage,’ Mrs Parker had been practising her French, ‘by Crystelle, rubies by Precious, armpits — ’ Mrs Parker allowed herself a little joke — ‘by Braun.’

‘Hope Militant Moll’s listening,’ muttered Candy.

‘Abigail’s ge-own is designed by myself, do a twirl, Abigail, you will all notice the kick-pleat.’

Clap, clap, clap, clap.

‘This is terrible,’ groaned Viking.

‘Foxie’s going to write a new book of martyrs starting with Abby,’ said Flora.

Surreptitiously getting her puppet fox from underneath her chair, she made him wave at Abby, who continued to gaze, grimly into space, not a smile lifting her blood-red lips.

‘Those in the front rows,’ vulpine Mrs Parker leered round, ‘will notice Abigail is wearing Peggy, my new inhouse fragrance.’

‘I’m wearing Piggy,’ stage whispered Clare, reducing the entire viola section to hysterics, which were fortunately drowned by the orchestra playing, ‘Happy Birthday, Peggy.’

Mrs Parker nodded graciously.

‘Thenk you, thenk you.’ Then, turning graciously to Abby, ‘and now, Maestro, will you make music.’

THIRTY-TWO

Ninion, still brooding, propped up the bar. He had drunk a litre of cider and a large gin and tonic as a chaser. He should have been playing that solo. Then he had a brainwave. Pushing his way through the crowds he reached the electrician who was doing the fireworks.

‘It’s my birthday,’ he began pathetically. ‘My parents were so poor we could never afford fireworks at home.’

Touched by this tale, the electrician, who wanted to get drunk with his mates, accepted a tenner and handed the job over to Ninion.

The only person who looked worse than Abby was Cathie Jones. Her tired red-rimmed eyes were as worried as an Alsatian’s above a muzzle. Scurf from nerves encrusted the prematurely grey roots of her lank coppery hair. Her tights were mostly darn, her make-up thicker than Abby’s to cover the bruise on her cheek. She was so thin that the ghastly primrose dress looked like a hand-me-down from a much older sister. A cheap brooch, covering the hole she had torn this afternoon, resembled an outsize nipple.

‘What a dog,’ said Quinton Mitchell, Third Horn, in disgust. ‘No wonder Carmine’s humping Lindy Cardew.’

Blue swung round to land Quinton one, but just in time Abby raised her baton, an exercise in weightlifting as her ruby bracelet glittered in the fading sunlight.

Dimitri was just about to draw his bow across the strings, when a loud voice said; ‘If you’re into harcheology, Turkey is definitely the place, thank you very, very much.’

It was Lindy Cardew coming in late, blowing discreet kisses at Carmine.

‘That’s ’im,’ she whispered to her friend. ‘You just wait till he blows ‘is trumpet.’

Abby shot Lindy an absolutely filthy look, not lost on any of the audience, and brought down her stick.

Buoyed up by a beta-blocker and several swigs of sherry from Miss Parrott’s hip-flask, Dimitri and his four cellos brought tears to everyone’s eyes with the beautiful introduction which was followed by the thrilling crashes of the storm. Abby found it almost impossible to conduct in high heels; only the thought that she would land on El Creepo stopped her falling into the orchestra.

It was time for Catherine Jones’s cor anglais solo, and the instant she started playing, the mockery faded on people’s faces. She looked as though she was sucking some heavenly nectar out of a bent straw, as if an angel’s hand had fun over her strained, tortured face restoring its former beauty.

Even the waitresses stopped washing up glasses to listen to the langourous, hauntingly lovely tune. No wonder Carmine was jealous. Even Abby looked at peace, her hand rising and falling in slow motion like a dancer’s as she smiled down at Cathie.

Such enthusiasm was too much for Ninion. A plague on both you hussies. There was a deafening explosion. For a terrifying moment, people thought it was a bomb, then twenty thousand pounds’ worth of fireworks erupted.

Crash, crash, crash, went Roman candles, jumping jacks, Catherine wheels, spilling out red, white and blue sparks; whoosh went the rockets exploding miles into the air, lost against a fading turquoise sky including the climax which said: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO PEGGY PARKER in red, white and blue. Cathie’s solo, and Peter Plumpton’s flute variations were totally obliterated, and there were no fireworks left for Carmine’s fanfare and the rousing finale. Piggy Parker was not the only one going ballistic. Blue was on his feet.

‘I’m going to strangle that focking electrician.’

As he dived for the edge of the platform, Viking pulled him back: ‘Wait for the break and we’ll both throttle him.

‘I need you to drown Benny,’ he added as an afterthought, as a nine-foot Steinway was wheeled on to the usual grumbling from the First and Second Violins. Clare, Candy, Flora, Juno, Nellie, Noriko and Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin, who had all been taken individually aside and told that Benny was playing the concerto just for them, waited expectantly. Cherub, who was playing the famous triangle solo in the third movement, shook with excitement, his triangle swinging from its silver stand like a hangman’s noose.

Benny was definitely drunk when he came onto the platform, even the lingering sulphur of the fireworks couldn’t disguise the wine fumes. He’d hardly bothered to warm up. He just regards this as a bread-and-butter concert, thought Abby furiously.

Twiddles from the orchestra, followed by rigid-fingered banging from Benny, had the audience, who were all now fanning their sweating faces with their programmes, jumping out of their seats.

Marcus put his head in his hands; how could anyone play so insensitively and so badly? Oh God, give me a chance.

At first, Abby tried to cover up Benny’s missed entries and fluffed lines, then she realized that half the orchestra were ignoring her and following Benny. Others like Dimitri, Blue, Viking and Flora, feeling desperately sorry for Abby, were following her instead. The result was almost more contemporary than Sonny Beam and, as Benny skipped a few bars whenever things got too difficult, everyone was soon jumping around like Tom and Jerry.

‘I played the last page three times,’ muttered Viking, at the end of the first movement.

‘Library gave me the wrong concerto,’ said Blue grimly.

Ninion, by this time, had escaped across a little bridge to the opposite bank with another litre of cider and a duck caller. So the slow movement, despite Benny’s bashing, was accompanied by furious quacking as though Donald Duck had joined Tom and Jerry.

Further hassle was provided by the mosquitoes, unchecked by the darting swallows, who were now attacking players in droves, particularly the balder heads of older members of the orchestra. Finally a huge dragonfly landed like a helicopter on the baldest head, that of Dimitri.

‘Quack, quack, quee-ack,’ called Ninion plaintively from the reeds.

Any giggling by the orchestra was then obliterated by Benny crashing into the last movement, interspersed by the silver shimmer of Cherub’s triangle. Cherub looked so angelic with his blond curls, pink cheeks and his excited smile, that the audience gazed at him, which made a furious Benny bash louder than ever.

At the end Abby stormed off, catching a four-inch heel in a chair leg, and falling off the platform into George’s arms.

‘Let me go,’ she hissed, enveloped by his strength and solidarity, longing to sob her heart out on one of his wide shoulders.

‘The Press want a photograph of you and Benny,’ said George.

‘I do not share that pianist’s interpretation,’ said Abby through gritted teeth.

‘Nor do I to be honest,’ conceded George, who had vowed never to book Benny again. ‘But let’s just get through this evening.’

Fortunately the audience who’d chatted throughout hadn’t noticed a thing wrong and were now looking forward to ‘bubbly and nibbles’ in the VIP tent.

‘What is the matter with Eldred?’ asked Quinton as Abby returned and raised the horn section to their feet for a special clap.

‘Wife’s just left him,’ said Blue.

‘Is that all? Thought he must be upset he was half a tone sharp in that last solo.’

But Blue had gone leaping into the crowd like a bloodhound in search of the focking electrician.

The setting sun balancing on the horizon gilded the huge trees of the park and softened the ox-blood stone of Rutminster Towers. House martins dived in and out of the eaves feeding their young. In the VIP tent the ice had run out, all Peggy’s pals expecting ‘bubbly’ were disappointed to be fobbed off with mulled Pimm’s.

‘So looking forward to meeting Abigail,’ they all chorused.

‘Artists don’t like to break the mood in the middle of a concert,’ Mrs Parker was telling them sententiously. ‘You will all have the chance of a few words later.’

‘Hum,’ said Flora, who’d been smuggled into the tent by Viking, ‘I don’t know what sort of mood Abby’ll be in.’

‘It’s a terrible concert,’ Viking shook his head. ‘Acoustics are always dire outside unless you’re up against a brick wall.’

‘Like the management,’ said Dixie, scooping up half a dozen asparagus rolls.

‘Also like the management,’ agreed Viking. ‘The strings get totally lost.’

‘Thank God,’ said Dixie.

‘I don’t know how you lot got in here,’ said Miles beadily, ‘but if you’re going to crash parties and avail yourself of Mrs Parker’s hospitality, you can jolly well stop coffee-housing and mingle with her guests.’

‘George Hungerford is awfully good at mingling,’ observed Flora, as she watched him pressing the flesh, talking to MPs, lawyers, local businessmen, shop owners along the High Street, never stopping long, too shy or too busy to want to get caught, but making each person feel important and welcome:

‘You must come to H.P. Hall and hear the orchestra. I’ll send you a couple of tickets, we’ve got some good dos coming up in the autumn.’

‘He’s sponsor hunting,’ said Dixie.

‘Up to a point,’ said Viking. ‘He’s also bought fifty acres on Cowslip Hill and wants to build on them, my guess is he’s greasing palms.’

Flora was screwing up courage to talk to George. She and Abby had been discussing Marcus’s poverty, and his heartbreakingly slow progress, over supper last night.

‘If I push him, the management’ll resist,’ sighed Abby, ‘they’re still pissed off I smuggled you in.’

‘I’ll try and introduce him to George,’ said Flora. ‘The only problem is that Marcus is so shy and unpushy, he’ll probably bolt.’

Now Marcus had joined her and Flora could see George getting nearer. Like most of the men he’d removed his dinner-jacket showing a roll of fat over his trouser belt. His evening shirt was transparent with sweat, his square face red and shiny. Why on earth did all the women in the orchestra find him sexy? And oh God, here was Benny, black curls soaked from the shower, cream silk shirt unbuttoned to the waist.

Deciding Flora was the most seductive of all the girls he’d propositioned, Benny sidled up.

‘How about a leetle deener at my ’otel, no-one would mees you, if we slope off.’

‘Piss off, you disgusting Frog,’ said Viking coldly.

Benny was about to land Viking one, but was distracted by the arrival of George, Mrs Parker and Lord Leatherhead, who had been boring Mrs Parker’s guests silly rabbiting on about bottled water.

‘Good concert, well done, all of you,’ he said heartily. ‘Peggy, I don’t think you’ve met our latest recruit, Flora Seymour. She plays the viola jolly well.’

Mrs Parker, who was even redder in the face than George, didn’t look remotely interested until Lord Leatherhead added that Flora’s mother was Georgie Maguire.

Oh hell, thought Flora.

‘I’m a large fan of ’ers,’ said Mrs Parker in excitement, ‘I’ve got all her records. Perhaps she’d like to visit the store one day. We could find her something really outstandin’ for her next concert.’

‘That’s sweet.’ Catching Viking’s eye, Flora started to giggle, then seeing George glaring at her, added quickly, ‘I wonder if I could possibly introduce a friend of mine, Marcus Campbell-Black.’

Beautiful boy, thought George. Looks as though he was born in a dinner-jacket, she would go for someone like that.

‘Are you the son of?’ asked Mrs Parker skittishly. ‘Very delighted to receive you.’

Marcus winced as her diamonds dug into him.

‘I’ve shot with your father,’ brayed Lord Leatherhead. ‘A very fine shot.’

‘Marcus is a very fine pianist,’ piped up Flora. ‘No, he is,’ she continued ignoring Marcus’s hands frantically waving for her to stop. ‘He was at the Academy and he plays like an angel. Could he audition for you some time, Mr Hungerford, or we could send you a tape?’

‘Good idea,’ said Lord Leatherhead.

‘Phone me at the office,’ said George then, as the warning bells started, ‘You lot better get back.’

‘I ’ope you will play at one of my soirées at Rutminster Towers, Marcus,’ said Mrs Parker graciously, ‘or come to afternoon tea under the walnut tree. Perhaps your father would like to look in, too. I’m sure he’d appreciate how much the RSO do for young people.’

Marcus, however, had boiled over. ‘I haven’t seen any sign of it,’ he said furiously, ‘or you wouldn’t have humiliated darling Abby by forcing her into that seriously hideous dress.’ Then seeing the horror and fury particularly on Mrs Parker’s face, added, ‘You succeeded in making one of the most beautiful women in the world look like a disgusting old slag-heap. You should be bloody well ashamed of yourselves.’ And, turning on his heel, he stumbled out of the tent.

‘If your friend wants to get to the top as a soloist,’ an enraged George turned on Flora, ‘I don’t think he’s going about it the right way.’

The choir had a good screech and the audience a good chat during the Polovtsian Dances by which time the sun had set, leaving an orange glow on the horizon, so no-one could read their programmes any more. Not that it mattered during the pièce de résistance which was only too easy to resist, Sonny’s Eternal Triangle.

Crash bang wallop, plinkety plonk, catawaul screech, went the orchestra to an increasing crescendo of shifting bottoms and mutterings as people ducked to avoid a night raid of bats.

‘Yodelayayo,’ carolled the plump young man in lederhosen.

Abby’s electric-blue shoes were killing her, her wrists and shoulders were agony, but that was nothing to the ghastly humiliation ahead, being hawked round Peggy Parker’s vulgar friends like one of Tamberlaine’s captured war lords.

Amidst the frightful din, she could hear Cherub ringing cowbells, reminding her that tomorrow she was flying out to Lucerne and Rodney for a month, and this nightmare would be over.

There was only a page left. Cherub had finished his last little solo. Then, during a dramatic pause when the orchestra were completely silent for three bars, Lindy Cardew could be heard saying loudly to her friend: ‘No, no, no, she hasn’t got a black one. She’s got a long furred marmalade one.’

Abby flipped. Swinging round she howled: ‘Will you flaming well shut up,’ which was fortunately drowned out for many of the audience by the final deafening tutti.

Manic that such a frightful din was over, geed up by the claque from soft furnishing who all wanted Cherub’s telephone number, the audience gave the piece a great reception, which gave Sonny plenty of time to run on and take his composer’s bow.

As Abby came off the stage clutching red-and-white gladioli and royal-blue delphiniums, she was accosted by a BBC crew and a horde of Press asking her about her new image.

Exactly on cue, a mallard, no doubt unnerved earlier by Ninion’s duck caller, dumped copiously on Abby’s electric-blue bosom, whereupon Abby laughed for the first time in days and said straight to camera: ‘Well done, duckie, that’s a distinct improvement.’

The next moment, horrified Parker minions charged forward to hurry her into the house and sponge her down. Upstairs Crystelle waited, ready with a respray before Abby met her public: ‘The most important part of your evening.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, I have to distance myself for a few minutes after a concert,’ said Abby and dived into Mrs Parker’s bathroom locking the door.

On the way to the Long Gallery to dump her viola, Flora flexed her aching back and wondered what had become of Marcus. He’d probably cooked all their geese with the management, but how brave and wonderful he had been.

Hearing a kerfuffle, Flora edged forward. Round the corner Blue had got hold of Ninion and hung him by his white dinner-jacket on a row of pegs.

‘You snivelling little bastard,’ he hissed, glaring into Ninion’s terrified blinking eyes, then he hit him very hard across the face with the back of his hand.

‘What did you do that for?’ bleated Ninion, swinging helplessly.

‘Don’t you ever do anything like that to Cathie Jones again; you’re not fit to lick her boots.’

Blue was about to hit Ninion again when George arrived, clicking his fingers for two heavies, who pulled him off.

‘That’s enough,’ snapped George. ‘Throw him in the river to cool him down,’ he told the heavies. ‘And I want you in my office first thing on Monday morning, Ninion.’

‘What was all that about?’ whispered Flora to Miss Parrott.

‘Brass have a problem when it’s humid,’ sighed Miss Parrott, righting her mauve beehive in the mirror, then, seeing the sceptical expression on Flora’s face, added, ‘Blue has rather a soft spot for Cathie Jones. And I think he’s upset Carmine, made her go home before the interval.’

Knickers was in a further twist. Retrieving his white dinner-jacket from Francis to wear at the party, he found it covered in black boot polish. Francis would lose his job at this rate.

Benny was even more upset, having decided to plump for second best, he couldn’t find Nellie the Nympho anywhere.

‘Yodellayayo,’ came an ecstatic cry from the shrubbery.

‘Someone’s dropped a pair of lederhosen,’ sniffed Fat Isobel, who was crying because she wouldn’t see Viking for a month.

‘I’m going to miss you, Lady C,’ Dixie was telling Clare in that ghastly Glaswegian accent which had become music to her ears. ‘The moors will be purple with heather.’

‘Daddy’s going up to Scotland for the 12th,’ said Clare, ‘I could go with him, then we could meet.’

‘We certainly could,’ said Dixie looking much happier. ‘Piss off you disgusting Frog,’ he added as Benny slid a too high hand round Clare’s waist.

Peter Plumpton, the First Flute, being small always got drunk very quickly.

‘Putti, putti, putti,’ he cried, as he advanced with an outstretched hand on a group of reconstituted-stone cherubs.

Miss Parrott was sharing a log, a bottle of white and a plate of Dover sole and lobster poached in Sauterne with Dimitri.

‘That opening to William Tell was the loveliest thing Ay’ve ever heard,’ she was telling him.

‘Your solo in Wrist’s Piano Concerto was perfect,’ confided Noriko.

‘Three agents have tried to sign me up, I’m going to be the next Evelyn Glennie,’ giggled Cherub, squeezing her little hand.

Meanwhile favoured customers, who hadn’t heard Abby yelling at Lindy Cardew, were congratulating Peggy Parker, who hadn’t either, on the graciousness of the occasion.

‘Abigail will be de-own shortly,’ promised Mrs Parker regally.

Mrs Parker’s bathroom had a dressing-room mirror with lights going round in a semicircle. Watching the moths helplessly smashing their wings and bodies against the burning bulbs, Abby gave a sob. It was just like her and the RSO. Out of the window she could see members of her orchestra chucking the stuff down their throats no doubt laughing themselves sick to see her so humiliated.

She jumped at a banging on the door.

‘We’re waiting,’ called Crystelle.

‘Just a sec,’ shouted Abby, turning on the shower.

At home having checked her sleeping children and paid the babysitter out of her pathetic housekeeping allowance, Cathie Jones climbed wearily upstairs. She was too tired to eat.

Gazing out of her bedroom at the stars she started to cry, then not wanting to wake the children, fished in her skirt pocket for a tissue and found a piece of paper on which someone had scrawled the words: ‘Darling Cathie, Thou art fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.’

Five minutes later, Abby stalked out into the garden and as usual everyone fell silent. She had changed back into her red vest and bicycle shorts. Her hair was slicked back and still dripping, her make-up totally washed off. There was a long, long pause.

‘What the fuck,’ snarled George.

Huge, menacing, he bore down on her.

‘Get bluddy oopstairs and back into that dress.’

Abby had never seen anyone angrier, except perhaps Mrs Parker.

‘What’s happened to your beautiful ge-own,’ she screeched.

‘I left it and the shoes on your bed.’

‘And what about those rubies.’

‘They’re on your dressing-table,’ said Abby, then waving an ironic hand at the RSO who were now filling their faces with Dover sole and lobster. ‘Why should I need rubies, when my orchestra are my jewels.’

THIRTY-THREE

The month of August was traditionally a holiday for the RSO. All in all, Abby got a rotten end-of-term report. An enraged Mrs Parker was threatening to withdraw her promised one hundred thousand pounds, and in cahoots with Miles and a horrified Canon Airlie, who had both heard Abby shouting at Lindy Cardew, were agitating for her dismissal. George fired off a written warning about consistently subversive behaviour, pointing out that Abby had only seven months left on her contract. Abby promptly tore up his letter. She should have spent August relaxing and, in the light of her disastrous conducting career, seriously attempting to play the violin again. The physio and the London specialist both said there was nothing more they could do. The block was in Abby’s head. But Abby couldn’t bring herself to try, terrified her genius had deserted her, and after her Strad, any violin would be a let-down.

She had hoped to spend August in Lucerne, enjoying Gisela’s cooking and having her feathers unruffled by Rodney. He appeared to have made an excellent recovery from his heart attack and was now teaching himself the cello, playing with great vigour and a lot of wrong notes.

In Lucerne, as in England, the heatwave showed no signs of abating and had already singed the woods around the lake, whose level had dropped more than a foot. Two days after her arrival, Abby stretched out in an orange bikini, lake water drying on her darkening gold body.

Despite the heat she and Rodney had just polished off the palest green avocado mousse and an exquisite fish salad, which Gisela had made for lunch, plus a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé. Abby was now misery-eating her way through a bowl of figs, her big white teeth tearing at the scarlet flesh. From the nearby shadow of a blue striped umbrella, Rodney sat drinking Armagnac, puffing at a large cigar, and listening as he had done since she arrived. He was very distressed to see her so unhappy.

‘Which of my naughty boys is causing you the most bother?’

‘They all hate me,’ moaned Abby. ‘Dixie, Randy, that vile Carmine, Quinton, El Creepo (beneath his smarmy manner), Davie Buckle, Lionel, Viking most of all.’

‘Are you apologizing enough, darling? If you start with the wrong beat, if you show three instead of four, you must say, “It’s my fault”.’

‘That’s weakness,’ stormed Abby. ‘Basically they hate taking orders from a woman, right. And we’ve got such terrific stuff coming up. I told you about Fanny Mendelssohn and Winifred Trapp.’

‘You don’t want too much of that.’ Rodney tipped his ash on the parched yellow grass.

‘Celebrating women in the Arts?’ demanded Abby.

‘Lot better places to celebrate them.’ Then, seeing the outrage on Abby’s face, added hurriedly, ‘You know I adore your sex, but I don’t feel they’re at their best composing music.’

‘That’s because you’ve never bothered to listen to them. Christ it’s hot.’ Angrily, Abby peeled off her bikini top. ‘And I bet they’d have delivered on time, if any one had really appreciated their music, not like Boris Levitsky. We’re recording Rachel’s Requiem next season and not a squeak out of Boris, and I gotta learn the wretched thing. Wasn’t Viking a friend of Boris’s?’

Always she returns to Viking, thought Rodney, feeling his cock stir as he glanced at the beautiful breasts only slightly less golden than the rest of her body.

‘Not really a friend,’ he said ‘Viking’s spoilt — he and Boris were in spiky competition over who could pull the best girls. Lionel’s your main problem. One can’t operate if the leader’s against one — I’m afraid he’ll always be a thorn in your deliciously firm young flesh, darling.’

‘Not so young any more,’ grumbled Abby. ‘I’ll be twenty-nine in October.’

‘And I’m going to be seventy-nine in October, don’t be a silly-billy.’

Abby sat up swinging her legs sideways. ‘I wish all men were like you.’

‘I’m not that different from the rest of them.’ Stretching out a warm hand as though he was testing a peach, Rodney gently fingered her breast.

Abby gasped, amazed at the sudden quivering warmth between her legs.

‘I–I see you as the grandfather I never really had,’ she stammered.

‘Really?’ Rodney raised a mocking eyebrow, as his thumb caressed a rapidly hardening nipple.

‘Where’s Gisela?’ whispered Abby.

‘Making crab-apple jelly. Artists are oblivious when they are in the process of creation.’

Abby shut her eyes as the languid practised caress continued.

‘You’re the one turning me to jelly; d’you really want me, Rodney?’

‘My child, a slow burn doesn’t mean the flame isn’t poised to singe the ceiling.’

‘Oh Christ,’ exploded Abby as, unwelcome as the bones singing in Ezekiel, the white cordless telephone rang.

It was Flora.

‘You’re not the only one in the doghouse, Abby, Hitler Hungerford says he’ll tear up Boris’s contract if he doesn’t deliver on 1 September, and he wants Boris to pay back the two-thousand-pound advance. Boris is in hysterics, he hasn’t got two pence, let alone two grand. I’ve asked him to stay. I hope you don’t mind. Perhaps Marcus and I can prod him into action and at least copy the stuff out for him.’

Abby looked down at Rodney’s hand, wrinkled, covered in liverspots, yet making it almost impossible for her to think rationally: ‘Boris can sleep in the attic bedroom.’ She glanced sideways at Rodney’s watch. ‘I’ll try and get the four o’clock plane.’

Rodney sighed as she switched off the telephone.

‘Probably just as well, darling. Tell Boris to give Lionel a long, flashy but not too difficult solo to keep him quiet. Haydn said you could do anything with musicians if you gave them the chance to show off.’

He was sad to see Abby go, but quite relieved. He wanted to learn the cello part of Don Quixote and he didn’t think he could have coped with a month of such obsessive introspection.

No-one could have been more obsessively introspective than Boris. Abby reached home before he did, and was pleased to see her little faded red-brick cottage peering out of the yellowing woods, the fox cub now seeking refuge from the hunting season.

‘You don’t think Boris has topped himself,’ said a worried Flora. ‘We expressed him some cash for his train fare and a taxi.’

Boris arrived with the first stars, having drunk his taxi fare on the train and drenched himself, falling into the lake, on his stumbling walk from the station. His only luggage was a bulging Waitrose carrier bag, of which Flora speedily relieved him.

‘Have you brought us some goodies?’

‘I vish.’

Inside, frantically scrawled on a mass of manuscript paper were the endless abandoned beginnings of Rachel’s Requiem.

‘I cannot write. I cannot pay back the RSO, I cannot pay Astrid, my lovely au pair, so she has taken the cheeldren to Rachel’s parents, who think me murderer anyway, for one month to geeve me peace to write.’

His upended dark curls were streaked with grey, his eyes were black caverns. He was shaking uncontrollably.

But after a very hot bath, and a change into Marcus’s sweatshirt and jeans, which now fitted his formerly stocky body, Boris had cheered up enough to tuck into a large steak, French beans and mashed potato, cooked by Marcus, and was soon pouring out his troubles and a great deal of red wine.

‘Schumann say: Requiem is a thing one writes for oneself! I shall not leeve long,’ Boris coated a piece of steak with mustard, ‘I am like Mozart, someone vill have to finish vork for me.’

Flora, who had Scriabin on her knee, removing goose-grass burrs out of his plumy white tail, picked up a spoon and helped herself to some French beans.

‘Who could finish it for you?’ she asked innocently.

‘Edith Spink or perhaps Sonny Parker,’ suggested Marcus equally innocently.

‘Never,’ Boris crashed his hand down on the kitchen table, spilling his half-pint of red wine. ‘Ovair my dead buddy.’

‘It’s going to be dead anyway,’ giggled Flora. ‘You’ll be twanging a harp on a cloud beside Rachel.’

‘Flora,’ reproved Marcus, mopping up the wine with a piece of kitchen roll. Scriabin’s proximity was making his eyes water.

‘I listened to John Tavener at the proms last night,’ Flora ignored Boris’s scowl. ‘It hardly left the note of D. You can be less boring than that.’

‘How far have you got?’ asked Abby.

‘I sketch most of it in the head, but I am so tired vorking sixteen hours a day.’ Then, as Flora played an imaginary violin, moaned, ‘I am so disappointed and frustrated at non-performance of my vork.’

‘How can they perform it, when you don’t write anything but rude postcards to Edith Spink?’ said Flora, returning to the French beans.

‘Are you still not having singers?’ asked Marcus, trying to lead the conversation into less thorny paths.

Boris nodded his shaggy head.

‘Britten write requiem to his parents wizout singers. I ’ate singers.’

‘I hate musicians,’ sighed Abby. ‘You’ve licked that spoon Flora. Why don’t we dispense with them as well.’

‘Then we could have sixty minutes of silence,’ said Flora, ‘jolly peaceful and much cheaper.’

‘The Arts Council would find it very meaningful,’ added Marcus.

‘You all joke,’ grumbled Boris, scooping up the rest of the mashed potato and adding an ounce of butter. ‘None of you realize, not Lear, nor Oepidus nor ’Amlet suffer like I do. I’m so vorried I’m written out.’

‘Course you’re not,’ said Flora, ‘you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep, and no bottles of red under the bed. We’ll all help you.’

‘Tomorrow I go on vagon,’ said Boris, refilling his glass.

Because Marcus stayed at home to practise and give piano lessons while Flora and Abby left the cottage to work, it was assumed that he had the time to shop, cook, unload the dish-washer, transfer dripping underwear from washing-machine to dryer, feed the cats, change duvets, let in plumbers and electricians and often pay for them, too.

Predictably the lion’s share of helping Boris fell to him. Thus the following morning, it was Flora who read out the nine sections of the Mass, so Marcus could copy them down and Boris could later tick off each section as he finished it.

‘“Dies Irae”,’ read Flora, who was wandering round the kitchen with Scriabin, a purring black-and-white ruff round her neck.

‘That’s a joke for a start. Rachel was such a crosspatch she gave Boris months and years of “Irae”, always making him smoke outside and not putting salt in anything except wounds.’

‘Next,’ Marcus looked up.

‘“Rex Tremendae”, what a terrific name for a dog.’

‘Got that.’

‘“Agnus Dei”,’ Flora giggled. ‘Sounds like Doris Day’s sister. Doris was seriously kind to dogs and filled her house and the annexe with strays — I wish we could have a dog.’

‘Well, you can’t.’ Clad only in her bikini, Brahms’ Second Symphony under her arm, Abby was on her way out to the garden.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked crossly, as she went through the living-room and found Boris sitting on one of her pale beige Habitat sofas, with manuscript paper, several pencils and erasers on an uncomfortably low table in front of him.

‘I’m thinking what to put,’ said Boris sulkily. ‘It’s August and the birds are mute from feeding their young as I am. Zee muse as desert me.’

‘We are not a muse,’ murmured Flora to Marcus.

‘Rodney suggested you wrote a long easy solo for Lionel to keep him quiet,’ suggested Abby.

‘I ’ate Lionel, little vanker, I will make eet impossibly deeficult.’

Cheered at the prospect of Lionel on the rack, Boris started to scribble down notes, but, having been bawled out by Abby for spilling a sneaked glass of red wine over her new yellow rush-matting, he retreated sulkily to Marcus’s studio.

Here he worked feverishly, sometimes stopping to discuss ideas with Marcus, working out details on the piano together, singing phrases which Marcus, who had absolute pitch, could take down like shorthand.

But Marcus’s main task was emptying waste-paper baskets of scrumpled-up paper. The progress was desperately slow. Boris spent a lot of time ringing Astrid, ostensibly to check on the children.

‘Such a good father,’ sighed Abby.

A week later, Boris had struggled to the end of the ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Rex Tremendae’, and Flora and Marcus were copying them out in the garden, helped by the kittens who kept jumping on top of the manuscript paper and shooting their black pens all over the place.

‘Probably improving it,’ muttered Flora. ‘Talk about Slav labour. And how many times do I have to tell you not to clean up after Abby — you’re too nice to her.’

They were harvesting in the field beyond the front gate, huge gold blocks rising like ingots out of the platinum-blond grass. But suddenly over the roar of the huge combine, Flora and Marcus heard Boris tapping out a tune on the piano, rising fourths and fifths, tentative but haunting. He was playing it again, changing it slightly, shoving in a few discords, then he played the first version.

Marcus and Flora looked at each other.

‘Oh, please don’t spoil it,’ they said in unison, as Boris introduced an interrupted cadence, and started messing around with the tempo.

‘We must tell him,’ Flora leapt to her feet.

‘He told us not to disturb him.’

‘We should before he buggers it up. Write it down. That is the most glorious, glorious tune,’ cried Flora, pushing open the door of Marcus’s once immaculate studio. ‘Play it again.’

Marcus followed, removing Boris’s wine glass from the top of the Steinway, which was already covered in drink rings, then scribbling down the notes on a piece of manuscript paper. As he finished he said in ecstasy: ‘It’s miraculous, Boris.’

Boris shook his head and, retrieving his glass, filled it up.

‘It’s too good, too little, too nice, too predictable.’

‘You’re crazy, Boris,’ interrupted Abby, who had heard that last version. ‘It’s so beautiful.’

‘Stunning.’ Flora picked up the piece of manuscript paper and sang the tune, lifting the hair on the back of everyone’s necks.

‘That’s it, “Rachel’s Lament”,’ said Marcus, sitting down and playing it on the piano.

Abby fingered the curves of Boris’s violin, never more longing to join in.

‘Please make it a horn solo for Viking,’ she begged. ‘Viking wouldn’t sentimentalize it.’

Boris looked sulky. ‘It is too sweet for my Rachel.’ And, snatching the page, he tore it into little pieces and stormed off into the wood, not returning until nightfall.

All the same the composition of such a beautiful tune, unleashed something in Boris. The next day, although he grumbled every time the others sang it, he kept working feverishly, sixteen hours on the trot, increasingly encouraged by what he had produced, wading through the rapids, clinging to one stepping-stone after another, until by the last evening of the third week, he had written six out of nine sections.

It was still so hot, they had all the cottage windows open. Abby was upstairs working on the Brahms Second Symphony which the RSO were playing their first week back. Flora was copying out the ‘Agnus Dei’ in the kitchen and also watching a prom production of Götterdammerung on television, fulminating because Brünnhilde had just jumped Siegfried’s horse into the funeral pyre.

‘Bloody bitch, I’ll report her to the RSPCA.’

She had turned down the sound because Marcus, who had a recital in the North of England the next day, was practising Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood. Even on the old sitting-room upright, it sounded exquisite, and Marcus had hardly had any chance recently to play anything except Boris’s stuff.

He’s the most talented of all of us, thought Flora guiltily, and he’s the one who makes all the sacrifices.

Marcus had reached a little piece called ‘By the Fireside’, when Boris burst in, tears streaming down his anguished face.

‘Rachel play that very last time I see her, she, too, have recital next day,’ he sobbed, ‘I pull her off piano-stool in middle and we made love.’

Seizing Flora’s yellow sarong from the floor, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose.

Marcus leapt up in horror.

‘I’ll stop, Boris, I’m dreadfully sorry.’

‘No, no, go on, play it on Steinway, it ees catharsis.’

Marcus was not very happy with his recital. He drove all the way to a small Lancashire mining town. No-one welcomed him except the caretaker. There were thirty people in the audience who clapped him politely. Afterwards a secretary paid him one hundred pounds. The whole trip cost him almost as much in petrol, as he drove on the following day to see his grandmother in Cheshire, who’d been hit by Lloyd’s and her sixth husband, and who never stopped grumbling about the small allowance given to her by Rupert. Marcus stayed a couple of nights trying to cheer her up, but depressing himself, realizing how desperately he missed his father and everyone at Penscombe.

Returning to Woodbine Cottage in the early evening, he found the usual chaos, the washing-up machine was full and unloaded, the sink full of mugs, glasses and plates. In the fridge there was no milk, half a yoghurt, some apricot-and-nut pâté and half a grapefruit. There was also no bread. Tapes and CDs lay out of their cases like loose change on the sitting-room carpet, the plants had wilted, no-one had emptied the dustbin. Finding a squirming sea of maggots when he opened the lid, Marcus closed it quickly. The cats were weaving round his legs, reproachfully, rejecting a bowl of Whiskas covered in flies’ eggs.

Marcus wanted to yell at someone but the place was deserted. He had just finished straightening things out and was gasping for breath as he staggered round the house with a watering-can, when the others rolled back from the pub in total euphoria.

‘We’ve had a brilliant few days,’ cried Flora. ‘Boris has finished except for the orchestration.’

‘You did the trick, playing the Schumann the other night.’ Boris thumped Marcus on the back so that the watering-can missed a pot of geraniums and spilled all over the sitting-room table. ‘That night I dream my Rachel forgive me. I weave By the Fireside into “Lachrymosa”.’

‘And into “Rachel’s Lament”, which reappears again as the most ravishing solo in the “Libera Me” at the end — it’s stunning,’ sighed Abby.

‘How did you get on, Marcus?’ asked Flora, getting a bottle of white wine out of a carrier bag.

‘Not brilliant.’

‘Many people?’

‘Not a lot, but at least they paid me.’

‘Ah well, that’s good, then.’ Flora picked up the corkscrew.

‘If you’re not too tired,’ asked Abby, ‘perhaps you could play us what Boris has written.’

They were all so happy, he couldn’t shout at them.

No-one could be bothered to stagger over to Marcus’s studio, besides he was fed up with the drink rings on the Steinway, so Flora lit one turquoise candle and one blue and put them in the candleholders on the old upright.

Their soft light flickered on Marcus’s face, which gradually grew less pinched and strained as he miraculously deciphered Boris’s scrawl, his fingers moving with increasing assurance over the sticky yellow keys.

Meanwhile Flora on the viola and Boris on the fiddle, when he wasn’t reaching for his pencil to scribble some change or sobbing his heart out, joined in, harmonizing as they went.

Often the music was dense and hideously discordant, particularly when Boris muddled through Lionel’s appallingly demanding solo, muttering happily, ‘This’ll fix him, zee vanker,’ but often some magical tune or cadence would emerge, and Marcus would pause and shake his head in wonder.

‘This is incredible, Boris.’

After the beautiful solo of ‘Rachel’s Lament’ had faded softly away, the requiem ended most uncharacteristically with a joyous fanfare.

‘And trumpets sound for Rachel on zee uzzer side,’ said Boris, wiping his eyes.

The next moment, utterly exhausted, but triumphant, the three of them collapsed in each other’s arms.

‘You’ve done it, you’ve done it.’

‘No, you play zee Schumann, Marcus, you deed it,’ said Boris. ‘After zat I produce in trance like Handel’s Messiah.’

‘Levitsky’s Messier,’ giggled Flora, ‘if we’re going to compare handwriting and crossing out.’

As Marcus started to play the ‘Lachrymosa’ again, really making it sing, Boris raised his glass to Abby who was huddled on the sofa clutching Sibelius.

‘I zank you, Abby, for giving us roof over the head.’

‘We’re The Three Tenants,’ announced Flora, shimmering down a glissando with a flourish of her bow. ‘Eat your hearts out Placido, Luciano and José.’

Glancing round, Marcus realized Abby’s shoulders were shaking: ‘What’s the matter?’ He jumped to his feet.

Abby looked up, her face crumpled and soaked with tears.

‘You’re all so lucky.’ And, dropping Sibelius on the carpet, she ran out into the garden.

‘She’s pissed, and Boris has been getting too much attention recently. Leave her,’ said Flora.

‘I cheer her up,’ Boris went towards the french windows.

‘I think you should have a bath first,’ said Flora, ‘I don’t believe you’ve touched a bar of soap for a fortnight.’

Putting the kettle on, Marcus realized he hadn’t eaten all day. There didn’t seem any point starting. When he took out a cup of coffee to Abby in the garden, all the daisies that had shrivelled on the parched yellow lawn seemed to have sprung up in the star-covered sky. Boris was sitting on the old white bench under the greengage tree with his arm round Abby.

‘You must guest more,’ he was telling her. ‘When I conduct the London Met or the New World, the musicians adore me because they ’ate Rannaldini so much. Don’t cry, my darling, I vill dedicate Requiem to you.’

THIRTY-FOUR

Boris had cracked the Requiem, now, as Flora said, he had only to ‘add the rough edges’. The next morning, having bathed at length and washed his hair in Marcus’s shampoo, and put on yet another pair of Marcus’s boxer shorts, he took the draft into the garden, looking handsomer than most dawns as he sat in a deck-chair eating dried apricots.

All great artists sacrifice the emotions and lives of those around them to further the interests of their art. In a mood to be expansive, Boris realized he had pushed Marcus too far.

‘You are sad.’

‘I’m OK. I wish my father would forgive me and I could see Taggie and Tab and the kids again. I wish my mother wasn’t married to that shit Rannaldini and I wish my career wasn’t going backwards.’

Boris’s face softened. ‘I will write a very good piano part into the Requiem.’

‘Not much point. I was so rude to Old Mother Parker, George Hungerford’ll never let me over the RSO threshold again.’

‘Markie.’ It was Abby calling from the kitchen, looking radiant in a new scarlet bikini. She had also washed her hair and was reeking of Amarige. ‘I can’t open this jar of coffee,’ She said as Marcus went inside. ‘My grip still isn’t right. Isn’t it a beautiful day?’

‘Forecast says rain,’ Marcus said, handing back the jar. Out of the window, he could see huge white clouds gleaming like arctic cliffs in the sunshine, banking up beyond the wood. ‘God, we could use it.’

‘Oh, Markie,’ suddenly Abby looked wildly excited, ‘d’you think Boris fancies me?’

It was the question he’d been dreading.

‘I’m sure.’

‘Oh, darling Markie,’ Abby hugged him, giving him the cruel benefit of her hot scented, nearly naked body. ‘You’re the little brother I never had.’

Hearing the post-van rattling over the dry stones up the lane, Marcus had an excuse to wriggle free before she felt the frantic hammering of his heart.

He was absurdly pleased to get a letter from the musical society in Lancashire.

Dear Mr Black,

Yours was the first concert our society has ever had. We all enjoyed it very much indeed. We would like to thank you, and take the opportunity of booking you again next year.

Boris had a letter from Astrid.

‘I haven’t ring her since Vendesday because of vork,’ said Boris mortified. ‘I vill ring her once I get to end of “Sanctus”, at least I can pay her now.’

Abby’s good mood evaporated when she read a postcard with a photograph of a donkey on the back which had arrived from Viking to Flora, saying how much he was looking forward to seeing her, and that he hoped L’Appassionata had recovered from her strop.

Conscious of a froideur despite the heat, Flora decided to make herself scarce. She was fed up with copying black dots. She wanted to buy a new dress and get her hair cut, and tried to persuade Marcus to go into Rutminster with her.

‘I ought to practise.’

‘And there’s still a mass of copying to do,’ protested Boris.

‘Can I borrow your car, Marcus?’ said Flora.

Left alone with Abby and Boris, Marcus felt increasingly claustrophobic as Abby, stretched out on the grass in her bikini and pretended to make notes on the huge score of Brahms’ Second Symphony.

Boris, flat stomached and lean hipped now he’d lost so much weight, his sallow skin turning a smooth dark brown, pretended to orchestrate the ‘Sanctus’.

He’s absolutely gorgeous, Abby gazed at Boris through splayed fingers. It was lovely that he was dedicating the Requiem to her. Imagine her biog: Not only was Abigail Rosen the Paganini and the Toscanini of her age, but also Boris Levitsky’s Immortal Beloved. Rodney’s caresses had made her aware of how desperately she needed a man.

‘Sheet, I ’ave run out of manuscript paper,’ Boris glanced down at the laboriously copying Marcus. ‘You got any more?’

‘This is my last page.’

‘And Flora’s taken the car,’ wailed Abby.

‘I wonder who’s got some?’

‘Certainly not the Celtic Mafia,’ said Abby with a sniff, then exchanging a languorous eye-meet with Boris, volunteered, ‘I’ll call Old Henry.’

Marcus was passionately relieved to escape. The bus-stop was only half a mile away if he took a short cut through the woods. Twenty yards down the track, he turned round to find Abby hovering at the gate. ‘Just wanted to check you’ve got your inhaler,’ she had the grace to blush. ‘Please take it slowly.’

Just to make sure I’ve really gone, thought Marcus bitterly.

I must ring Astrid, thought Boris, as he put down the orchestrated ‘Sanctus’. But, on his way to the house, he passed Abby, poring over Lionel’s impossibly difficult violin solo which Marcus had just copied out and left on the garden bench.

‘God, this is wonderful — if only I could play it.’

‘You vill,’ said Boris, ‘I used to be a teacher, I taught Marcus, I vill help you to play again.

‘You take the bow in this hand.’ Boris kissed her fingers. ‘You take the violin in this one.’ He picked up her left hand, examining the palm. ‘Such a strong fate line, so much passion.’ Slowly he ran his tongue along her heart line.

Abby shivered with excitement, not least because she’d got all the feeling back.

She and Boris were exactly the same height. For a second he gazed at her, then buried his lips in her scented neck below the left jawbone.

‘This ees where you put your violin,’ he whispered, ‘I weel make you bettair.’

As he kissed her lips, he was enchanted by the wild enthusiasm of her response.

Rain brought back the wild flowers, the butterflies and Viking O’Neill to Rutminster. He had enjoyed his time in Dublin. He had recorded the Strauss Horn Concertos, played chamber music, romped with his numerous nephews and nieces, gossiped to his mother until four in the morning, looked up old girlfriends and drinking pals. He had also acquired a second-hand BMW convertible into which he had transferred the Don Juan horn call.

But by the end of three and a half weeks he had had enough. He lusted after Flora, about whom he’d had a lovely erotic dream last night, but which had faded like a rainbow when he tried to retain it. And then there was Abby.

He had had a letter from Rodney:

Darling boy,

Beneath that golden exterior you have a heart of gold. Please be kinder to Abby, she is so isolated and sad. Genius should be pruned, but also sunned and fertilized. I suspect she analyses far too much and should let her instincts take over. If you, as leader of the pack, eased up on her a little, the boys and girls would follow suit. Dear me, I miss you all so much.

Viking wondered about being taken over by Abby’s instincts. He didn’t really fancy her. She was too overbearing, too self-centred, too troublesome, but she irritated him all the time like a sharp piece of apple lodged in his teeth.

The downpour stopped as he approached Rutminster. Pausing in a lane of traffic, he noticed harebells glinting like amethysts in the verge, and meadow browns and common blues dancing ecstatically over the drenched fields. A red admiral had also upended itself on the top of a thistle, avoiding the prickles, as it sucked the sweetness from the mauve flower. With Abby, you’d have to accept prickles and all.

Odd to have a traffic jam on this road, then he realized all the drivers were slowing down to gaze at a beautiful girl at the bus-stop. Her long blond hair and faded denim dress seemed to echo the gold wheat fields and the blue of the sky. With her were a boy and a girl, both very dark haired, pale and sloe-eyed. Must be the child-bride of some rich Arab, thought Viking dismissively.

Pulling up, he smiled and offered her a lift.

The girl brightened. Viking was very brown, his lion’s mane bleached. In the last three weeks, he’d got a little more sleep than usual. Such an attractive man, with his arm round such an adorable dog, surely couldn’t be an abducter.

‘You know,’ she consulted a letter, ‘the vay to Voodbine Cottage?’

‘I go right past the door, hop in. Over you go, Nugent.’

Leaping out, Viking gathered up a pile of scores, paperbacks, CDs and a big bag of duty free and dumped them in the boot, as the big black dog jumped obediently into the back seat.

‘He loves kids,’ he added, as he opened the back door for the two pale dubious-looking children, and ushered the heavenly blonde into the passenger seat.

Then, raising two fingers at the furiously jealous crescendo of car horns behind him, he drove off with a retaliatory flourish from Don Juan.

‘My name’s Viking.’

‘Mine’s Astrid.’ They gazed at each other in delight.

‘Who are you going to see?’

‘Boris Levitsky.’

‘At Woodbine Cottage?’

Viking was horrified at the idea of Boris hanging round Flora and Abby, exuding Russian machismo.

‘He finish Requiem,’ said Astrid, in her lilting singsong voice. ‘He have crisis. Someone called George wanted Boris to pay money back.’

Viking’s opinion of George Hungerford rocketed.

‘Boris dedicate Requiem to me,’ went on Astrid happily. ‘He say eet almost over. We stay weeth his in-laws, horrible people.’ Astrid lowered her voice. ‘Marmite sandwich for supper, salad viz no dressing, feenish up every bit, only children’s television, bed by eight, so we decided to surprise Boris.’

The two children soon cheered up when Viking stopped and bought them ice-lollies.

Traveller’s joy falling in creamy drifts stroked the top of the car, the rain had polished the dusty trees, Viking breathed in a smell of wet earth and moulding leaves as he splashed through the puddles up the rough track.

‘Are we nearly there?’ asked Astrid, as Nugent began to sniff excitedly.

‘Nearly,’ said Viking, driving as carefully as possible over the stones to enable Astrid to apply pale pink lipstick to her delicious mouth.

‘You look gorgeous,’ he added, ‘wasted on that Russian.’

‘I miss heem so much. Oh what a pretty leetle ‘ouse,’ exclaimed Astrid as the car drew to a halt.

Getting out, Viking put her hand on Nugent’s collar.

‘Just hang onto my dog till I see who’s in. He’s not safe with cats.’

Sauntering up the lichened path, Viking found the pale green front door locked.

‘I’ll check round the back.’

In the garden, he found Abby and Boris asleep, lying naked in each other’s arms. Wonder at Abby’s amazing body, rage at what she’d clearly been doing with it, gave way to consternation that Boris’s children mustn’t catch him like this.

Alas, Marcus’s car had conked out on the way home and Flora, meeting a returning Marcus and the cats, had walked back through the woods with them. As they came through the back gate, Mr Nugent had ducked out of his collar and joined his master. Suddenly seeing the two kittens, he hurtled across the lawn, in a frenzy of barking sending both cats scuttling up the horse-chestnut tree.

Rudely awoken, Abby and Boris groped for their clothes. Boris hadn’t quite pulled up Marcus’s boxer shorts when Astrid appeared round the corner, but a huge smile spread across his face.

‘Astrid, oh my Astrid,’ he cried running, slipping. across the lawn, with arms outstretched. ‘You have come to me, ’Ow I have meesed you.’

‘You ’avent meesed me at all,’ screamed Astrid, sizing up the situation. ‘You peeg, you absolute peeg.’ And she slapped Boris very hard across his face.

‘My darling, vy you do that?’ Boris clutched his cheek. ‘I finish my requiem. Abby and I just embrace for celebration.’ Then, turning most unflatteringly to Abby, said, ‘Tell Astrid it was nuzzing.’

‘Seems to have been a good deal of nuzzling,’ observed Flora. ‘Oh do shut up, Nugent.’

‘You peeg,’ repeated Astrid. ‘And I don’t want requiem dedicate to me.’ Bursting into tears she ran back to the car.

‘I do see her point,’ said Viking coolly. ‘I was just returning your kids, Boris, here they are.’ As Boris was safely covered now, he drew the two children round onto the lawn. ‘And as Astrid hasn’t had a day off for a month, I thought I’d take her on a jaunt.’

‘No,’ roared Boris.

But Viking was too quick for him, whistling to a reluctant Nugent while sprinting back to the car, he jumped in beside a still-sobbing Astrid, and reversed down the lane to the victorious accompaniment of Don Juan’s horn call.

Boris was demented.

‘Run after my Astrid, tell her it was a moment of euphoria,’ he beseeched Abby. ‘I love her, and more important I cannot afford to lose a wonderful nanny for keeds.’

‘Don’t be such a shit, Boris,’ said Marcus, putting an arm round Abby’s heaving shoulders.

‘Everyone ees against me,’ said Boris and stormed off to The Bordello.

Abby was livid. What was the point of being the Immortal Beloved if you had to share the honour with a Swedish au pair, and for someone, who delayed for ever when producing music, Boris had proved disappointingly precipitous when it came to making love.

Twenty minutes later, Boris was back, drenched again. Finding The Bordello locked, he had hammered on the door until Astrid had poured a bucket of water over him. He had then hovered in the bushes until Viking emerged to check he had gone and knocked out one of Viking’s front teeth.

‘I hope he suffer.’

‘He won’t, it’s always being knocked out, it’s only crowned,’ said Flora.

Boris proceeded to tear up the horn solo of ‘Rachel’s Lament’.

‘Bloody hell, I spent all yesterday copying that out,’ grumbled Flora, shuddering at the increase in maggots as she retrieved the page from the bin.

Nor was she very pleased herself. Boris had promised to dedicate the Requiem to her, and she’d spent far too much on a pair of new Black-Watch-tartan dungarees for Viking’s return, and now he’d shoved off with Astrid. The astrologers had been absolutely right that Jupiter, bringer of jollity, was about to be rammed by a comet.

Boris was now looking helplessly at his children, who were trying to coax down Scriabin and Sibelius.

‘Vot would you like for supper?’

‘Oh, Marcus’ll find them something,’ said Abby.

‘Marcus will not,’ said Flora, catching sight of his stricken face. ‘Marcus and I are off to see Four Veddings and a Funeral.’