Appassionata

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Was I OK? Was I really OK? Omigod, I’ve missed you. How long can you stay on in the UK? Did you like the encore? I need you, oh Christo, I want you so bad.’ She started to fumble with the pearl pin, then changed her mind. ‘No, let’s go back to the Plaza, I can’t be bothered to change.’

  Abby had a clear, carrying voice, which had shed most of its Bronx accent and which squeaked endearingly when she got excited. Christopher, however, was in no mood to be charmed.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Repelled by her trembling, burning sweatdrenched body, which had once excited him so unbearably, he prised off her hands and shoved her away. ‘How in hell can you expect to be taken seriously, right, when you come onto the platform dressed as a hooker? Those hot pants are so tacky.’

  Pulling up a chair and like Rodolfo sitting on it back to front, as if to protect himself from further sexual assault, he asked: ‘Where are those gowns Beth bought for you?’

  ‘They’re too hot.’ Abby would have added too middle-aged and too frumpy, but she didn’t want to insult Christopher’s wife.

  ‘And why in hell are you wearing that even tackier diamond bangle round your ankle? We all know you’re coining it. Dressed like that, you’re an insult to Brahms and a brilliant conductor.’

  Abby was already prowling round the little room but at the reference to Rannaldini her contrition evaporated.

  ‘He’s a monster,’ she howled. ‘He screwed me on every tempo, dragging or pushing me on. I nearly unravelled in the last movement.’

  ‘Has it entered your thick head that he might be right? He only happens to be the greatest interpreter in the world.’

  ‘Only because he makes the most bucks. That’s all you care about. He’s an asshole.’

  ‘Don’t be obnoxious,’ exploded Christopher. ‘Why must you always telegraph the fact you come from the gutter, and how dare you snatch your hand away when he was gracious enough to kiss it.’

  ‘Bloody Judas kiss, right? The orchestra detest him, and he’s only been with them a few days. They were really complimentary,’ she added wistfully. ‘Julian Pellaficini said I reminded him of David Oistrakh and he’s played the concerto loads of times himself.’

  Christopher looked at her pityingly.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself your exquisite sound had anything to do with the ecstatic smiles on the musicians’ faces. They only rattled their bows so joyfully because your ostentatious and unauthorized little encore pushed them into overtime. And all that posturing and writhing is so unnecessary. Give the audience an orgasm if you must, but please don’t have one yourself.’

  ‘That’s because you’re not giving them to me any more,’ said Abby sulkily.

  Like a neglected wife, finding comfort in a child, she picked up her Strad and dusted it down, before putting it lovingly in its case, and tucking it up in a periwinkle-blue silk scarf.

  ‘Thank you, little fiddle.’ She dropped a kiss on its curved scroll, then turned defiantly towards Christopher. ‘I’m not playing for that son-of-a-bitch again.’

  ‘Sure you are.’ Christopher opened the fridge. ‘You’re gonna record all the Mozart concertos with him and the New World Symphony Orchestra, for starters.’

  ‘Like hell I am. Fix me a vodka.’

  ‘You’re staying sober.’ Christopher poured her a glass of Perrier. ‘C’mon, you don’t want to catch cold. Get showered and changed. And at dinner you will turn on what little charm you have. “Thank you for making music with me, Maestro, I was only acting up because you’re so awesome, Maestro. I’m sorry I broke the no-encore agreement, Miss Harefield.” You cannot afford to make enemies.’

  ‘Because you want to sign them both up,’ hissed Abby. ‘All right, I’m sorry.’ She was near to tears now. ‘I just want us to be alone.’

  But as she peeled off her fuchsia-red body stocking, Christopher reached for her dressing-gown. The size of her breasts no longer turned him on, only her enormous royalties.

  ‘Please kiss me,’ begged Abby, ‘perlease.’

  ‘We haven’t got time.’ He was now flipping through her good-luck cards to see if they were from anyone important.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling Beth suspects us,’ he added.

  On her way to the shower, Abby halted in horror.

  ‘Oh no, she’s been like a mom to me.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t behaved like a daughter to Beth,’ said Christopher brutally.

  ‘How did she find out? Oh my God, this is awful.’

  ‘People are talking.’

  The corniest way of dumping a woman in the world, thought Rupert scornfully. Christopher was even more of a tosser than he looked. Rupert needed a large drink, and he had heard enough.

  Emerging from the Artists’ Bar ten minutes later, he found Hermione coming off the platform still screeching. Not only had Abby got higher billing, but her applause had lasted four times as long. Seeing Rupert, however, Hermione halted in mid-screech like a child spying a tube of Smarties.

  ‘Rupert Campbell-Black, you’ve come all the way from Penscombe to hear me sing.’

  ‘I have too,’ lied Rupert. ‘You were sensational.’

  ‘Then you must join us for dinner. Just Rannaldini, me and Christopher Shepherd. He’s charming, and Abigail Rosen, she’s a spoilt brat, but we don’t have to bother with her.

  ‘There’s an official reception first at the British Embassy, I must look in because they’d be so disappointed,’ she added, as they were both nearly sent flying by musicians, already changed, charging out to find the nearest bar. ‘But you can come too,’ she shouted over the stampede. ‘Then we’re going on to dinner at Wellington’s.’

  The official reception, like all the diplomatic parties Rupert had ever been to, was held in a large, high-ceilinged room with sculptured yellow flower arrangements on shiny leggy furniture and frightful oils of elder statesmen on eau-de-nil walls. As April signalled the start of the Argentine autumn, the central heating was on at full blast.

  Having spent many years on the show-jumping circuit and as a Tory minister, Rupert discovered he knew plenty of people. Most of the guests, however, knew no-one, so they gravitated to the evening’s two celebrities. Hermione, who was now wearing a wonderbra and a purple Chanel suit, was livid that the crowd round Abby was so much larger.

  Abby had changed into a very short halter-necked dress in oyster-coloured silk, which clung lasciviously to her marvellous body. Her hair, freed from its black velvet ribbon, rippled in Pre-Raphaelite abundance over her shoulders. She was still clutching her dark red roses, whose long stems dripped onto her skirt, moulding it between her thighs. She was also wearing high heels which enabled her to see over the crowd to where Christopher was having a competition with Hermione to see who could crinkle their eyes at one another the more engagingly.

  Rupert, half-listening to the ancient Italian Ambassador, who like all ambassadors seemed to have once had an affaire with his mother, was tall enough to watch Abby over the crowd. She looked wild, vulnerable and on the brink of tears, as she made heroic attempts to scintillate on the Perrier Christopher had forced on her, politely signing programmes and answering silly questions about how she got such a lovely shine on her fiddle. When the fifteenth person asked how she managed to memorize so many notes, she finally flipped and snapped back: ‘By learning them.’

  As Christopher was still arched over Hermione, about to free fall down her cleavage, Abby slid out of the group of admirers, across the room, and onto the balcony where Julian Pellafacini had commandeered a bottle of Beaujolais and was quietly getting drunk. Easily the most diplomatic person in the room, who had spent his entire career keeping the peace between troublesome conductors and temperamental players, Julian had suffered this afternoon the almost unique humiliation of being bawled out three times by Rannaldini in front of the orchestra.

  Emptying Abby’s Perrier over the balcony, he filled up her glass with red wine. After the stifling room, it was blissfully cool. Abby breathed in a smell of
damp earth, moulding leaves and the distant reek of bonfires. The full moon was untangling itself from the trees, a round gold ball for Orion’s dogs to play with.

  ‘Where’s Rannaldini?’ she asked.

  ‘Taking a conference call from Japan, or so he says.’

  With his blond hair even whiter in the moonlight, and his long pale kindly face, Julian looked like the ghost of Abraham Lincoln who’d had a premonition he was about to be assassinated.

  ‘Rannaldini was so god-damned charming when he was guesting,’ he said bitterly, ‘that the orchestra, particularly the young players, were knocked out when he got the job. Now they’re shell-shocked – like a bride waking up on the first morning of her honeymoon to find her handsome young groom’s turned into a werewolf.

  ‘Rannaldini met the Second Flute outside the elevator this evening. “Alio leetle girl,” he purred, “I ’aven’t made you cry yet ’ave I?“’ Julian shuddered and filled up his glass.

  ‘He’s a lousy conductor,’ said Abby scornfully. ‘He only gets edge-of-seat performances because no-one knows what he’s going to do next. If you hadn’t held the first violins back in the last movement, I’d have come off the rails.’

  When she told Julian about the proposed record deal with Rannaldini and the New World he was delighted.

  ‘The orchestra would love it, they thought you were terrific.’

  ‘Christopher didn’t,’ sighed Abby.

  ‘Then you need a new agent,’ said Julian angrily. ‘Christopher once tried to get me on his books. I’d probably be as famous as Zukerman or Perlman but I found him,’ he chose his words carefully out of kindness, ‘too – er – forceful.’

  ‘I’ve grown accustomed to his force,’ sighed Abby.

  She jumped as the french windows opened, but it was only a waitress after Abby’s autograph.

  ‘We’ll trade it for another bottle of red wine,’ Julian emptied the remains into Abby’s glass. ‘Where are you going next?’

  ‘England,’ said Abby unenthusiastically.

  ‘Christ, I’d love to work there. If I were single, I’d take the next plane. But the workload’s insane. You have to work twice as hard for half the money. I’d never see Luisa and the kids. But my dream is to end up in the Cotswolds, leading some West Country orchestra.’

  ‘I’ll join you. Are you coming to dinner?’

  Julian shook his head.

  ‘I’ve got to rally the troops, stop them topping themselves or getting so drunk they don’t make the plane tomorrow.’

  The orchestra was off to Rio in the morning.

  ‘But let’s keep in touch, I don’t want Christopher to stamp out that individuality.’

  Looking up at the sky Abby noticed a drifting fleece of white cloud had put a great ring of mother-of-pearl edged with rust around the moon.

  ‘That moon’s got exactly the same round-eyed, round-faced pseudo-innocence as Hermione,’ said Abby, putting Julian’s card in her bag. ‘God, she’s hell.’

  ‘Hell,’ agreed Julian. ‘The number of times I’ve seen her jab another soloist in the foot with her high heel to steal a bow.’

  Through the french windows, Abby could see her agent putting his empty glass of Perrier on a tray and picking up a full one.

  He’ll dump me for Hermione just as effortlessly, thought Abby in panic. Hermione, who talked too much to drink a lot, was merely bending over the silver tray to check her reflection.

  ‘Placido is one of the only top-flight singers like me,’ she was telling Christopher, ‘who doesn’t have an agent, but his wife is very supportive. If my partner Bobby wasn’t so busy running the London Met—’

  Despite having Christopher’s full attention, she was miffed that at the other end of the room Rupert was being happily propositioned by the ravishing wife of the Chilean Ambassador, and that Julian Pellafacini, who should also have been paying court, was out on the balcony with that sluttish Abby. Despite the tropical heating, Hermione gave a theatrical shiver.

  ‘Could you possibly close those windows, Christopher, I daren’t catch cold. As Placido’s always saying, one’s voice is a gift from God, one has a responsibility.’

  But Christopher had already crossed the room.

  ‘Come inside at once,’ he ordered Abby furiously. ‘You’re supposed to be working, and you’re putting Hermione in an awful draught. How can you be so selfish?’

  ‘I figured you were keeping her warm with all that hot air,’ replied Abby.

  Julian laughed. Christopher glared at him. The moment he’d signed up Rannaldini, he’d make sure Julian got the boot – particularly as now he was wearing one of Abby’s red roses in his buttonhole.

  Grabbing Abby’s arm, Christopher frogmarched her across the room.

  ‘The French Ambassador’s wife wants a word about a charity gala.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to her, right?’

  ‘You ought to do more for charity.’

  ‘I do a great deal too much for Help the Agent.’

  Christopher turned purple.

  ‘What has got into you?’

  ‘You – you’ve been so mean.’

  ‘You’ve got to learn to take criticism,’ hissed Christopher. ‘Aaah, Madame Ambassador!’

  Seeing Christopher belting back to Hermione a second later, Rupert decided to take the bullshitter by the horns. Trapping Christopher against a large yucca plant, he introduced himself as the chairman of Venturer Television.

  ‘Why won’t you answer Declan’s calls?’

  ‘No point,’ said Christopher dismissively. ‘Abigail’s diary hasn’t got a window in the next three years.’

  ‘She talked to Time. Declan’s the best interviewer in the world. Only take a day. Declan could come to you.’

  ‘We’d be talking six figures,’ said Christopher grandly. Then, at Rupert’s look of disbelief, added: ‘Every thirty seconds someone buys one of Abby’s records, OK? We can get those kind of bucks anywhere, and 20 per cent of any overseas sales.’

  ‘Declan sells worldwide.’

  ‘So does Abigail. She was in New Mexico yesterday, she’s off to the UK tomorrow, then Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, Tokyo, then back for a charity gala in New York.’

  ‘Declan could meet her in any of those—’

  ‘Hermione my dear, your drink needs freshening,’ and Christopher was gone leaving an enraged Rupert in mid-sentence.

  Christopher controlled Abby’s media appearances. He knew there must always be something exciting on the horizon to tempt the record stores, but he had no intention of letting Declan loose on her. The publicity would have been sensational. But Abby was much too impulsive and unguarded, particularly after a few drinks. With a grand inquisitor, like Declan, she could easily break down and dump about her long affaire with Christopher and her guilt about Beth.

  FOUR

  Outside a taxi was waiting to take them to Wellington’s. Having installed himself in the front and Abby and Hermione quivering with animosity in the back, Christopher was enraged when Rupert sauntered down the embassy steps and jumped in beside Abby.

  ‘Hi,’ he kissed her cheek, ‘my name’s Rupert Campbell-Black. Hermione invited me along.’

  ‘Rupert comes from my neck of the woods,’ said Hermione reverently.

  Christopher knew exactly whose neck he wanted to wring.

  In the dim light, Abby was instantly aware of a flawlessly carved profile, only softened by a beautiful curling mouth, and an iron-hard thigh rammed against hers, because Hermione’s bottom had taken up so much of the back seat.

  ‘And you deserved every one of those red roses, darling,’ murmured Rupert, making a V-sign at Christopher’s rigidly disapproving back. ‘Where’s Signor Ravioli?’

  Hermione laughed heartily. ‘You mustn’t tease him, Rupert, he’s taking a conference call from Tokyo and meeting us at Wellington’s.’

  Rannaldini, in fact, was not ringing Japan but pleasuring the Second Flute in the conductor’s room, an
d then dispatching her to do his packing at the Hilton. He looked as smooth as hell when he arrived at the restaurant having changed into an ivory silk shirt and a black blazer, with a huge wolf coat slung around his shoulders. But the smug post-coital smile was promptly wiped off his face when he saw Rupert and there was a dangerous moment beneath a large portrait of the Duke of Wellington wearing too much lipstick, when they met face to blue-spotted tie, because Rupert was so much the taller.

  ‘You know Rupert, don’t you Rannaldini?’ gushed Hermione.

  ‘No, but we have my trainer, Jake Lovell, in common,’ said Rannaldini silkily, ‘who is about to oust Rupert as leading trainer and who was a very great friend of Rupert’s ex-wife.’

  Not a flicker in Rupert’s face betrayed how much he wanted to hit Rannaldini across the room.

  ‘And we also have Lysander Hawkley in common,’ he drawled, ‘who’s an even closer friend of your present wife, Rannaldini. I gather she’s taken up race-riding, and was last seen hurtling across country on The Prince of Darkness – perhaps Jake Lovell could give her a job, although I hear she’s expecting Lysander’s baby.’

  Seeing the murder in Rannaldini’s deadly-nightshade-black eyes, Christopher said hastily: ‘Shall we go straight in?’

  Dinner, as a result, was incredibly acrimonious; scenes from the Battle of Waterloo depicted on the dining-room walls were nothing to the barrage of sotto voce bitchery flashing between Rupert and Rannaldini.

  Christopher placed himself between Hermione and Abby but just as he was ushering Rannaldini bossily to Abby’s other side, Rupert nipped in and pinched the seat. Not having eaten all day, he was more than a little drunk. He was fed up with Christopher for snubbing him and leaving him to pay for the taxi, so decided to irritate both him and Rannaldini by flirting with Abby.

  Stung by Christopher’s earlier rejection but believing she had a night ahead and a week in the UK with him Abby had taken one incredulous look at Rupert, who was even more beautiful in the relentless overhead light, and was only too happy to flirt back.

  ‘Great entrance this evening,’ Rupert told her softly. ‘You and Rannaldini looked like Snow White and the single dwarf.’