by Jilly Cooper
‘It’s now being dumped on by Birmingham pigeons, which is what it deserves. You don’t give a fuck about me. I’m just the eternal jackpot on the fruit machine. How many millions of notes have I played to buy this apartment, and you’ve just desecrated it. Well, you’ve blown it this time.’
Seizing the carving knife, which Sandra had used to level the bottom of the rose stems, Abby bent back her other hand, almost abstractedly examining the veins, faint as biro marks, on the inside wrist. Then, raising the knife, she made a deep cut, half an inch above her watch-strap.
Seeing her hand hanging like a snowdrop, spurting blood, and the agency’s livelihood gushing away, Christopher leapt forward to stop her slashing her right one.
‘Not your bowing hand, for Christ’s sake.’
SEVEN
Abby was raced to hospital. Micro, neuro and plastic surgeons jetted in from all over the world to save her career. After a seven-hour operation, including a massive blood transfusion, they managed to repair both the tendons and the arteries and suture the nerve sheaths. As the nerves had been severed, she was spared a lot of pain when she came round. That would come later as the nerves grew back pitifully slowly at a millimetre a day.
She was kept heavily sedated with tranquillizers, antibiotics and painkillers pouring in through the drip. Counsellors poured in, too, and physiotherapists to waggle gently the lifeless fingers.
Abby had no movement left. She couldn’t cup her hand, move her thumb across to her little finger or open and shut or splay her fingers at all. She would have to wear a splint for months to stop her hand contracting like a vulture’s claw, which meant all the muscles would waste.
Abby asked only one question: would she ever play the violin again?
‘In time,’ said the chief consultant. ‘If you persevere with the physio. The nerves will take at least a year to regenerate, then we’ll be able to tell more. Whether you’ll ever play to concert standard is doubtful. There’s too much pressure put on young soloists today.’
Abby was devastated. There were fears for her sanity, as she sobbed uncontrollably for hours on end, or gazed blankly into space.
How could she have deliberately destroyed her God-given talent just to break out of Christopher’s boa-constrictor stranglehold, to spite him because he no longer loved her?
Christopher had tried to hush up the story, arrogantly ordering Abby to say nothing, as he passed himself off as the lone boy-scout hero whose tourniquet had saved Abby’s life. Unfortunately, the porter in Abby’s block had noticed Sandra going in and out. Who could forget those knockers in a hurry?
Christopher had also patronized and ridden roughshod over too many people and wriggled out of paying for too many lunches to have many friends in the Press. The result was a monumental scandal, particularly at such a tragic loss of a unique talent.
‘TIGRESS AND CHEATER,’ shouted the headlines over huge pictures of a smouldering Abby and a sanctimonius Christopher. Christopher had also lied about the fact that Beth had found out. She had had no idea and was wiped out by such betrayal, which made Abby feel infinitely worse.
Nor were matters helped by Hermione, who was at first irked by the massive coverage, then, when it showed no signs of abating, decided to cash in and fly to New York.
‘CARING HERMIONE IN MERCY DASH,’ announced The Scorpion with a picture of the great diva on the hospital steps clutching a bunch of already drooping roses and her latest CD, label out, as presents for Abby.
Ignoring the fact that after thirty seconds Abby had rung down in hysterics to have her chucked out, Hermione afterwards told the army of reporters that she had advised Abigail to involve herself in charity work.
‘“Think of the poor people of Rwanda,” I urged her. “At least you are being looked after by wonderfully caring hospital staff.” I hope the sacred message of my latest CD, Heavenly Hermione, will bring her spiritual refreshment.’
Abby, who’d had to be given a massive shot of Valium, wasn’t remotely cheered up five minutes later when Rupert sauntered in. He was in New York to check out laser surgery for Xav’s birthmark, and arrived with a carrier bag over his head.
‘What in hell are you doing?’ snarled Abby.
‘Hiding from Hermione.’
‘She’s only interested in your beautiful hands, and they’re still on show.’
‘Actually she’s far too busy fighting for access to the make-up department with all those consultants, who are becoming television stars, providing bulletins on your progress.’
He removed the carrier bag and smoothed his hair. He was wearing a love-in-the-mist blue shirt which matched his long blue eyes, which in turn matched the patch of blue sky which was all Abby could see through her window. Part of a sunny outside world, which seemed lost for ever.
‘Poor old duck,’ said Rupert, remembering the bleak horror of Taggie’s miscarriages. ‘It must be like losing a baby.’
‘Far, far worse,’ Abby snapped. ‘Like losing a thousand babies. Every time I played a concert, I gave birth.’
Rupert was appalled by her appearance. A forelock of dark hair fell damp and flat to her eyebrows. Her fleshless face was dominated more than ever by the haunted, heavily shadowed yellow eyes. The only plumpness left was in the curve of her lower lip. She had lost twenty pounds. Seeing her huddled, wide-shouldered, long-legged body, Rupert was reminded of some shell-shocked youth fatally wounded in the trenches.
Getting out his fountain-pen, he drew a blue cross on the inside of her right wrist just where it joined her hand.
‘This is the place if you want to top yourself properly. You did it too far up the arm, just means the nerves take longer to grow back.’
‘Will they?’
‘Course they will. I had no feeling for six months after I trapped a nerve at the LA Olympics; Ricky France-Lynch’s arm took nearly three years; my son-in-law Luke’s hand was pulverized by a polo ball. We all got better.’
He had brought her a bunch of lilies of the valley, and a little silver replica of a head of garlic.
‘That’s to ward off evil, you’re to keep it beside you all the time. Taggie’s also made you a tin of fudge. She sent love and said she was dreadfully sorry.’
‘Thanks,’ said Abby listlessly. ‘Did you get your baby?’
‘We got two, Xavier and Bianca. Flew them home last week. The grooms had hung a welcome home banner across the gate and balloons all up the drive. Edith Spink brought the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra over in a bus to play “Congratulations”. All the dogs had bows, it was great. Xavier couldn’t believe his eyes. He’s walking all over the place now. And his first word was Daddy, so he’s obviously going to be a diplomat.’
Rupert gave a big yawn.
‘Sorry, we’re not getting much sleep at the moment. Bianca’s routine’s all out of sync.’
His tearing spirits made Abby feel even more dreadful, particularly as they kept being interrupted by nurses popping in to check Abby’s fingers for gangrene and gaze at Rupert.
‘They never allow me a second to brood,’ groaned Abby. ‘And oh God, the counsellor’s due at three o’clock.’
‘Don’t believe in that crap,’ said Rupert. ‘Only person who can sort you out is yourself. Counsellors are flooding into Penscombe at the moment. There’s a ghastly beard with an Adam’s apple who’s got a crush on Taggie and keeps forecasting disaster because we’ve adopted a black child. He asked me yesterday whether I was going to teach Xav the customs of his country? Did he want me to give Xav a line of coke for breakfast, I said.’
But Abby wasn’t listening, being too wrapped up in her own tragedy.
‘I can’t do Declan’s programme now,’ she said sulkily, ‘if that’s what you’ve come for.’
Rupert’s face softened.
‘I came to see you, because I was dead worried and because I like you a lot. Classical music bores the tits off me, reminds me of my first wife, but you made it as exciting,’ Rupert cast round, ‘as a good Gold
Cup.’
Abby started to cry. Rupert took her in his arms.
For a second, Abby clung to him enjoying the muscular warmth, then, as the counsellor came in, she screamed with rage: ‘Is there no peace except beyond the grave?’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ chided the counsellor. ‘She’s doing great,’ she added to Rupert.
‘I must go,’ Rupert got to his feet. ‘The only answer,’ he ruffled Abby’s hair, ‘is to become a conductor. That shit Rannaldini needs some competition.’
Shepherd Denston, who were in turmoil, were fast coming to the same conclusion.
‘If only Abby’d done the job properly,’ grumbled Howard on a conference call to Christopher and young Howie in London, ‘she could have become a cult figure like James Dean or Marilyn Monroe.’
‘Not enough mileage,’ said young Howie. ‘She’s better alive. We gotta find something for her to do.’
Shepherd Denston needed the money. It was not just the houses on Long Island and the old masters and young mistresses, acquired on the expectation of Abby’s massive income. The agency had also extended themselves dangerously, backing concerts throughout Eastern Europe, only to find the newly free populations were hungrier for new cars than culture.
‘What a pity that contract with Rannaldini never got signed,’ said Howard.
‘We better get her Strad back,’ said Christopher briskly. ‘Can’t let it lie idle. Maria needs a decent instrument.’
Maria Kusak was Abby’s bitterest rival, one of the agency’s rising stars.
‘Fact that Abby’s pulled through suicide, like coming off drugs, or cracking anorexia, is gonna evoke public sympathy,’ said Howie, then groaned as his secretary handed him a fax saying that Benny Basanovich had been so drunk in Munich he’d skipped pages of Prokofiev’s Third Concerto before falling off the piano-stool.
‘The only answer,’ said Howard, ‘is for her to learn to conduct, while we see if her hand’s gonna recover.’
For now though, Abby must leave the limelight until the scandal had died down. Sir Rodney Macintosh, who’d said some uncomfortingly sharp things to Christopher after the accident, gallantly came to the rescue, and offered Abby the use of his house on Lake Lucerne.
‘The wild flowers are out of this world, darling, and the mountain air is purer arid more exhilarating than Krug.’
Rodney’s ancient housekeeper, Gisela, who was used to temperamental artists, would build up Abby’s strength. There was every score in the world to work on. She could have a resident physio and a succession of student conductors to teach her the rudiments.
Christopher, everyone decided, must bow out of Abby’s life. Another reason why Lucerne was a good idea. Her career, in future, would be handled by the London office and, when he wasn’t racing all over Europe to sort out the chaos caused by Benny Basanovich, by Howie Denston.
EIGHT
Clutching her silver clove of garlic, Abby arrived in Lucerne. Rodney met her and, with a series of loud bangs, singing: ‘All boys are cheap today, cheaper than yesterday,’ to the tune of ‘La Donna e mobile’, drove her out to his house along the lake.
Known as Flasher’s Folly, it stood on the town side of a wooded peninsula, which seemed to crawl into the lake like a huge furry caterpillar. The house itself was square, black gabled, with a mossy red roof and warm yellow walls smothered in white wisteria. The oak front door was thirty yards from the water’s edge. Behind the house was a lawn flanked by honeysuckle, rose colonnades and a water garden fed by two springs. Separating the garden from the mountains was an orchard and a copse of linden trees. Rodney’s fourth wife, the one who’d played concertos in her nightie, had plainly been a wonderful gardener.
‘We’ve had some great parties over the years,’ Rodney squeezed Abby’s shoulder. ‘In heatwaves we often bathed starkers in the lake at midnight.’
The entire attic was set aside for Rodney’s train sets. He could run ten trains simultaneously along the tracks without any crashes.
‘The secret of conducting is to be able to do ten things at once.’
Abby’s big bedroom took up most of the second floor and had windows front and back. As well as a four-poster with sprigged white-and-yellow muslin curtains, it contained a piano, a record player, bookshelves packed with every score from Purcell to Gorecki, a stuffed bear wearing a Victorian bishop’s mitre and, among other pictures on the pale Parma-violet walls, a portrait of Rodney’s second cousin, Myrtle, who’d become a missionary.
Apart from Gisela, the household included Rodney’s cat, Shostakovich, a huge, indolent charmer with long grey hair and big orange eyes, who usually lay around in pools of sunlight, but who was currently weaving round Abby’s legs, being driven crazy by a heady smell of coq au vin from the kitchen.
‘Oh wow, how lovely to have a cat.’ Ecstatically Abby bent to stroke Shosty, as he was known. But as she gathered him up, her left hand couldn’t support him, and he crashed to the floor, flouncing off on fluffy grey plus-fours.
‘Lands on his feet like his master,’ said Rodney reassuringly.
Like Rupert, he was horrified by Abby’s appearance; so tall, thin and pale, a tree stricken by lightning. She touched her left hand constantly, desperate for the return of any feeling.
To distract her he led her to the front window. Outside, the shimmering pale blue lake seemed to merge into the powder-blue mist and the grey-blue sky without any horizon. But gradually snowy white peaks began to appear.
‘Look darling, they’re all coming out to welcome you. Those are the Riga Mountains and that big crooked peak is Mount Pilatus, named after Pontius Pilate. Legend has it that after he sentenced Christ to death, he came here to suffer for his sins.’
Pilate and me, thought Abby bleakly.
‘I can think of worse places. It’s better than Croydon,’ said Rodney.
Woods were now emerging on the opposite shore. ‘Now you can see Tribschen,’ he went on, pointing to the prettiest white doll’s house on a high grassy mound, ‘where Cosima lived with Wagner and, before he became a conductor, Hans Richter worked there as Wagner’s secretary.’
‘Richter,’ for a second Abby was roused out of her apathy, ‘my hero. He was such a brilliant musician. Orchestras just adored him.’
She didn’t add that with his beard, mane of hair, broad shoulders and air of authority, Richter had looked rather like Christopher. Richter, however, had been a devoted husband. A Christopher with honour. But she must forget Christopher. Hopelessly she clutched her silver garlic.
Aware of her misery, Rodney pointed to an island of trees rising out of the water about fifty yards from the shore.
‘After a long day of copying out The Mastersingers, Richter, a very strong man, used to row across the lake from Tribschen at dusk, embark on that island and practise the French horn, thus starting another legend of a mysterious ghost horn player.’
Leaning out of the window on those early summer evenings, waiting for the stars to come out, Abby often imagined she could hear the first sweet notes of a horn, but they were only owls hooting and the cries of the water birds.
Looking back on her first few months in Lucerne, Abby was appalled that she behaved quite so horribly. Generous, passionate, demanding, workaholic, her last twelve years had been dominated by Christopher and more recently by her Strad, which had now gone back to the bank. Abby missed the Strad even more than Christopher; her relationship with the violin had been so close, so joyous, so tactile, so successful, it had been like taking a beloved dog back to a rescue kennel. And the heartbreaking beauty of her surroundings only made her loss worse.
The doctors were pleased with her. By October the severed muscles had knit so she now had some movement in her fingers, but she still had no grip and no feeling in her palms or her fingertips.
Her worst problem, however, was her inability to relax. Raging at the slowness of her physical recovery, she plunged into conducting, standing in front of the long gold mirror in her room endless
ly waving a baton to records, trying to anticipate the entrances of the various instruments, or giving herself blinding headaches poring over scores long into the night.
Her main difficulty was having to conduct in a vacuum. If only she could have returned from Lucerne with a case of different musicians, set them up like chess pieces, breathed life into them, and rehearsed and rehearsed them until she dropped.
‘How can I practise without an orchestra?’ she raged at Rodney. ‘It’s like learning to be a good lay from reading sex books.’
‘I could certainly help you with the latter,’ said Rodney.
‘It isn’t a joke.’
So Rodney in his sweetness, for her twenty-sixth birthday on 26 October, rounded up all his musician pals in Lucerne and Geneva, the twenty-strong local choir and four soloists, and arranged for them to spend the weekend at Flasher’s Folly.
The plan was for Abby to rehearse The Messiah with them on Saturday and Sunday and then give a performance in front of an invited audience on Sunday night. Abby was so excited and terrified, she became utterly impossible. Desperate for evidence that her hand was better, she was also constantly and recklessly testing it.
Rodney only spent about a third of the year in Lucerne and Gisela liked everything to be perfect. On the Friday morning before the concert, gold leaves were tumbling into the lake, but it was so warm she had laid breakfast outside. Café au lait, bacon and mushrooms picked at dawn from the orchard, home-made croissants and apricot jam were all served on and in rose-patterned gold-leaf plates, cups and saucers, part of a priceless set of twelve.
Rodney, who was whipping through The Times crossword, which was faxed out to him from Rutminster every morning, always had his orange juice out of a heavy glass tumbler, of which he was inordinately proud. Engraved with his name and a picture of a puffing train, it had been presented to him by his orchestra on his seventy-fifth birthday last year.