by Jilly Cooper
‘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 u
nctuous 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.’