by Jilly Cooper
FLORA SEYMOUR Wild child, pilgrim soul and daughter of Georgie Maguire. Destroyed by a teenage affaire with Rannaldini, now concentrating on the viola.
CHRISTOPHER SHEPHERD Abigail Rosen’s agent, a control freak, who provides the respectable front of Shepherd Denston.
MISS SMALLWOOD Secretary, Cotchester Music Club.
STEVE SMITHSON Second Bassoon of the RSO and representative of the Musicians’ Union. Muscular right arm from throwing the book at people.
DAME EDITH SPINK A distinguished composer and Musical Director of the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra.
TOMMY STAINFORTH Principal Percussion of the RSO.
MRS DICK STANDISH A skittish sponsor’s wife.
DENNIS STRICKLAND Principal Viola of the RSO, known as ‘El Creepo’.
BILL THACKERY Second Desk, First Violin of the RSO. Better at cricket than the violin. Jolly good sort.
JAMES VEREKER A television presenter.
WALTER A benevolent bass.
SERENA WESTWARD Head of Artists and Repertoire at Megagram Records.
CLAUDE ‘CHERUB’ WILSON Third Percussion of the RSO. Very dumb blond and orchestra mascot.
XAVIER A Colombian orphan.
THE ANIMALS
BOGOTÁ A black labrador puppy.
JOHN DRUMMOND Miss Priddock’s cat, office mouser to the RSO.
GERTRUDE Taggie Campbell-Black’s mongrel.
JENNIFER One of Lady Baddingham’s yellow labradors.
NIMROD Rupert Campbell-Black’s lurcher.
MR NUGENT Viking O’Neill’s black collie.
PENSCOMBE PRIDE Rupert Campbell-Black’s favourite and finest horse.
SHOSTAKOVICH Rodney Macintosh’s grey Persian cat.
SIBELIUS AND SCRIABIN Abigail Rosen’s black-and-white kittens. Like magpies, the two of them bring joy.
TIPPETT Dame Edith Spink’s pug.
TREVOR Flora Seymour’s rescued mongrel.
Appassionata
OVERTURE
ONE
In the second week of April, Taggie Campbell-Black crossed the world and fell head over heels in love for the second time in her life. The flight to Bogotá, delayed by engine trouble at Caracas, took fifteen hours. Taggie, who’d hardly eaten or slept since Rupert broke the news of their journey, could only manage half a glass of champagne. Nor, being very dyslexic, was she able to lose herself in Danielle Steel or Catherine Cookson, nor even concentrate on Robbie Coltrane camping it up as a nun on the in-flight movie. She could only clutch Rupert’s hand, praying over and over again: Please God let it happen.
By contrast Rupert, concealing equal nerves behind his habitual deadpan langour, had drunk far too much as he sat thumbing through a glossary at the back of a Bogotá guide book.
‘I now know the Colombian for stupid bugger, prick, jerk, double bed, air-conditioning, rum and cocaine, so we should be OK.’
At El Dorado Airport, the policemen fingered their guns. Seeing an affluent-looking gringo, the taxi-driver turned off his meter. As they drove past interminable whore-houses and dives blaring forth music, past skyscrapers next to crumbling shacks, Rupert’s hangover was assaulted as much by the shroud of black diesel fumes that blanketed the city as by the furiously honking almost static rush-hour traffic. There was rubbish everywhere. On every pavement, pimps with dead eyes, drug pushers carrying suitcases bulging with notes, tarts in tight dresses pushed aside beggars on crutches and stepped over grubby sloe-eyed children playing in the gutter. How could anything good come out of such a hell-hole?
As Taggie couldn’t bear to wait a second longer, they drove straight to the convent. Now, quivering like a dog in a thunderstorm, she was panicking about her clothes.
‘D’you think I should have stopped off at the hotel and changed into something more motherly?’
Rupert glanced sideways. No-one filled a body stocking like Taggie or had better, longer legs for a miniskirt.
‘You look like a plain-clothes angel.’
‘My skirt isn’t too short?’
‘Never, never.’ Rupert put a hand on her thigh.
By the time they reached the convent, a sanctuary amid the squalor, appalling poverty and brutal crime of the slums, the fare cost almost more than the flight. The Angelus was ringing in the little bell-tower. The setting sun, finding a gap in the dark lowering mountains of the Andes, had turned the square white walls a flaming orange. A battered Virgin Mary looked down from a niche as Rupert knocked on the blistered bottle-green front door. But no-one answered.
‘We should have rung first to check they were in,’ said Taggie, who, despite the stifling heat of the evening, was trembling even more uncontrollably. She looked about to faint.
‘I can’t imagine they’re out at some rave-up.’ Gently Rupert smoothed the black circles beneath her terrified eyes. ‘It’ll be OK, sweetheart.’
He clouted the door again.
Now that he was in Cocaine City, Rupert had never more longed for a line to put him in carnival mood to carry him through the interview ahead. His longing increased a moment later when the door was unlocked and creaked open a few inches and he had a sudden vision that Robbie Coltrane had got in on the act again.
A massive nun, like a superannuated orang-utan, with tiny suspicious eyes disappearing in fat, a beard and hairy warts bristling disapproval, demanded what they wanted. She then insisted on seeing their passports, and looked as though she would infinitely rather have frisked Taggie than Rupert, before grudgingly allowing them in.
By contrast the Mother Superior, Maria Immaculata, was femininity and charm itself. She had a round, almost childish face, like a three-quarters moon, smiling, slanting brown eyes and a cherished olive complexion set off by a very white linen wimple. As she moved forward with a rustle of black silk, the pale hand she held out to Rupert and Taggie was soft and slightly greasy from a recent application of hand cream. Mother Maria Immaculata believed you brought more comfort to the poor and suffering if you looked attractive.
It was the same in her office. Crimson bougainvillaea rioted round the windows outside. Frescoes and wood carvings decorated the white walls of her office. On her shiny dark desk, which seemed to breathe beeswax, beside a silver vase of blue hibiscus flowers, lay the report of Rupert’s and Taggie’s marriage drawn up by English social workers.
But Maria Immaculata did not set much store by gringo gobbledygook. More importantly, Rupert and Taggie had come with an excellent recommendation from the Cardinal, who was a friend of Declan O’Hara, Rupert’s partner, whose television interviews were transmitted world-wide. Even the Pope, who was evidently writing a book, and might want to promote it on Declan’s programme one day, had put in a good word. Anyway, Maria Immaculata preferred to make up her own mind.
And then Sister Mercedes, who acted as the convent Rottweiler, had helped matters greatly by bringing in this beautiful couple – the man as blond, tall, handsome and proud as El Dorado himself, and his wife as deathly pale, slender and quivering as a eucalyptus tree in an earthquake, and whose eyes were as silver-grey as the eucalyptus leaves themselves.
Taggie was clutching a litre of duty-free brandy, a vast bottle of Joy, a British Airways teddy bear wearing goggles and a flying jacket, and a white silk tasselled shawl decorated with brilliantly coloured birds of paradise.
‘For you,’ she stammered, dropping them on Mother Immaculata’s desk and nearly knocking over the vase of hibiscus, if Rupert with his lightning reflexes hadn’t whisked it to the safety of a side table.
‘I h-h-ho-pe you don’t m-m-m-ind us barging in, straight from the airport, but we were so longing—’ Taggie’s voice faltered.
Timeo Danaeos, thought Sister Mercedes grimly. She spent her life pouring cold water on the romantic enthusiams of Maria Immaculata, who was now lovingly fingering the white shawl.
‘Dear child, you shouldn’t have spoiled us.’
‘They will do for a raffle,’ said Sister Mercedes firmly.
Maria Immaculata sigh
ed.
‘Perhaps you could arrange some tea, Sister Mercedes. Sit down.’ She smiled at Rupert and Taggie and pointed at two very hard straight-backed wooden chairs. ‘You must be tired after such a journey.’
‘Not when you’ve been travelling as long as we have,’ said Rupert, thinking of the wretched years of miscarriages and painful tests and operations, the trailing from one specialist to another, not to mention the humiliation of the endless KGB-style interrogations by social workers.
‘Are you capable of satisfying your young wife, Mr Campbell-Black?’ or ‘Would you be prepared to take on an older child, one perhaps that was coloured, abused or mentally and physically handicapped?’
To which Rupert had snapped back: ‘No – Taggie’s got enough problem children with me.’
‘You’re too old at forty-four, Mr Campbell-Black. By the time he or she is a teenager, you’ll be nearly sixty. I’m afraid if you want a baby, you and Mrs Campbell-Black will have to go abroad.’
Rupert gritted his teeth at the memory.
Looking at the two of them, Maria Immaculata felt that beneath his cool, Rupert was the far more apprehensive. Probably because his background, which involved a disastrous first marriage, a string of affaires, one illegitimate daughter – the English social workers had hinted there might be others – was much more likely to scupper the adoption. He had, however, been an excellent father to his two teenage children and appeared to have a very happy marriage to this beautiful wife.
And who would not, thought Maria Immaculata, admiring Taggie’s sweet face, now that the sun curiously peering through the bougainvillaea had added a glow to her blanched cheeks.
The hand not clutching Rupert’s was now rammed between her slender thighs to stop them shaking. It was also noticeable how she winced every time the crying of a baby in the orphanage could be heard over the wistful chant of women’s voices coming from the chapel.
Over herbal tea so disgusting Rupert suspected it had been made from Sister Mercedes’ beard shavings, it was agreed Taggie should spend the next three weeks helping in the orphanage to indicate her suitability as a mother. Rupert would drop her off and collect her in the evenings. There was no way Sister Mercedes was going to let him loose among her novices.
As a rule, couples were never shown their prospective baby at a first interview. But Maria Immaculata was so charmed by Taggie trying so heroically to hide her longing, that she reached for the telephone and gabbled a few sentences. Sister Mercedes pursed her thick lips – it was all going too fast. Rupert, who’d picked up some Spanish on the international show-jumping circuit, went very still. What if they produced a hideous baby, Taggie had such high expectations.
‘You may find you cannot love the baby we have chosen for you,’ said Maria Immaculata as though reading his thoughts. ‘But our babies are like gold to us, and we, in turn, may decide you are not the right parents to have one, but we thought—’
There was a knock on the door and a beautiful young nun in a snow-white habit, whose dark eyes widened in wonder as she saw Rupert, came in bearing a tiny bundle hidden in a lace shawl.
‘This is Sister Angelica, who runs the nursery,’ said Maria Immaculata.
I wouldn’t mind taking that home, thought Rupert irrationally.
‘We thought Mr and Mrs Campbell-Black might like a glimpse of baby Bianca,’ went on Maria Immaculata.
This time the hibiscus really did go flying, as Taggie leapt up and stumbled forward, drawing back the shawl and gazing down in wonder at the little crumpled face.
‘Oh look,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, may I hold her? Oh Rupert, oh look,’ she gasped, taking the fragile body in her arms.
As if it were the Christchild itself, thought Sister Angelica.
Taggie gazed and gazed.
‘Look at her tiny nose and her perfect ears, and her long fingers and she’s got little fingernails already and eyelashes and her skin’s like ivory. Oh Rupert, was anything ever so adorable?’ Taggie’s gruff voice broke, and her tears splashed down onto Bianca’s face waking her, so the baby blinked and opened big shiny black eyes.
‘Oh thank you, she’s so beautiful,’ sobbed Taggie.
It was as instinctive as one of his brood mares nuzzling and suckling a new-born foal. Suddenly Rupert didn’t need that cocaine hit after all.
Seeing the look of pride and triumph on his face, Maria Immaculata mopped her eyes. Sister Angelica was openly crying as she dabbed Joy behind her ears. Only Sister Mercedes looked as though her big end had gone.
‘There, I mustn’t monopolize her, you must hold her,’ Taggie turned to Rupert.
But Rupert was only happy because Taggie was overjoyed. To him, Bianca was just a blob. In fact the only baby he’d ever liked had been his daughter Tabitha.
Perhaps Bianca sensed this, because when she was handed over to him she went absolutely rigid, screamed, and even regurgitated milk over his blazer, until Sister Angelica, laughing, removed her.
Meanwhile a dazed Taggie was hugging Maria Immaculata. ‘I know it’s only the beginning and she’s not remotely ours yet, but thank you,’ she mumbled. Then, turning to a still, stony faced Sister Mercedes, she settled just for clasping her hand.
‘You’ve all been so kind, oh may I hold her again?’
‘Would you like to give Bianca her bottle?’ asked Maria Immaculata, then, ignoring Sister Mercedes – to hell with the raffle – added: ‘I think this calls for a glass of brandy all round. I do hope you’ll be comfortable in the hotel Sister Mercedes has chosen for you. It is very convenient, only three kilometres from the convent.’
To Rupert, the Red Parrot was Sister Mercedes’ revenge – a two-storey, cockroach-ridden version of the hair shirt. Having acceded to Rupert’s demands for double beds and air-conditioning over the telephone, the landlord, Alberto, whose tight, grease-stained grey vest displayed tufts of stinking, black armpit hair, showed them into a room where the double bed wouldn’t have accommodated two anorexic midgets. The air-conditioning consisted of wire netting over the window, an electric fan which distributed the dust and the swarms of insects, and a gap along the top of the walls to let in the blare of the television sets in neighbouring rooms. Outside the rickety balcony was about to collapse beneath the weight of two parched lemon trees in terracotta tubs, and traffic roared both ways up and down what had been described as a ‘quiet one-way street’. It was only when Taggie looked round for water to relieve the parched lemon trees, that they realized the nearest bathroom was twenty yards down the corridor.
Seeing that Rupert was about to blow his top, Taggie said soothingly that Alberto couldn’t be that bad.
‘Did you see those sweet little hamsters running round his office?’
Rupert hadn’t got the heart to tell her they were on tonight’s menu along with another Colombian delicacy: giant fried ants.
‘The only consolation,’ he said, crushing a second cockroach underfoot, ‘is that the Press will never dream of looking for us here. Tomorrow we’ll move somewhere else.’
‘I don’t think we can. Alberto just told me he’s Sister Mercedes’ brother.’
But they were so tired and relieved they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms in one tiny bed.
The next morning, Taggie, shrugging off any jet lag, was back at the convent, blissfully happy to be looking after Bianca and helping Sister Angelica with the other orphans. Having dropped her off, Rupert returned to the Red Parrot and spent half the morning on the telephone checking up on all his horses, including his best one, Penscombe Pride, who had happily recovered from a nasty fall in the Rutminster Gold Cup.
Rupert also tried to cheer up his favourite jockey, Lysander Hawkley, who was suicidal because his old horse Arthur had collapsed and died within a whisker of winning the Gold Cup, and because the girl he loved, Kitty Rannaldini, was showing no signs of leaving her fiendish husband.
‘No Arthur and no Kitty, Rupert, I don’t think I can stand it.’
Afterwards Ru
pert visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bogotá. As a former government minister, he wanted to see how many strings he could pull, and how much red tape he would have to cut through to enable them to take Bianca back to England.
He lunched with a polo friend, a sleek, charming playboy called Salvador Molinari, who offered him a cocaine deal.
‘You know so many reech people, Rupert.’
The deal would have sorted out all Rupert’s problems at Lloyds. Regretfully, he refused.
‘I’ve got to behave myself, Sal, until we’ve got Bianca safely home.’
Later, in the Avenida Jiminex, Rupert bought some cheap emeralds from a dealer for Taggie, his daughters, Perdita and Tabitha, and Dizzy, his head groom. In Bogotá, beside the dark-haired, dark-eyed Colombians, Rupert was as flashily conspicuous as a kingfisher. Leaving the dealers, he was stopped by a policeman, pretending to be doing an official search, who then tried to make off with Rupert’s Rolex and his wallet. Being still high from a cocaine hit at the dealers’, Rupert knocked the policeman across the street, leaving him minus two front teeth, and went off and bought a gun and a money belt.
On the way to pick up Taggie, the taxi broke down. Having asked Rupert to give him a push, the driver proceeded to drive off with Rupert’s briefcase, containing the emeralds and all the adoption papers and medical reports, stamped both in Petty France and by the Ministry in Bogotá.
As Rupert proceeded to shoot the taxi’s tyres out with his new gun, two more policemen smoking joints on the pavement, totally ignored the incident. Retrieving his briefcase, finding excellent use for all the Colombian swear words he’d learnt on the flight over, Rupert went off and hired a bullet-proof Mercedes, which made him half an hour late picking up Taggie, which in turn resulted in a sharp dressing-down from Sister Mercedes.