Appassionata

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Could I have a word?’ he asked Marcus.

  Ravel had once confessed sadly that Boléro was his only masterpiece and it contained no music. But after Sonny’s self-indulgent, mindless, ear-murdering junk, Boléro sounded glorious. Tommy Stainforth, Principal Percussion, joined later by Cherub, his nose bleed staining his white shirt like a boy soldier in battle, kept up the relentless hypnotic beat on their silver snare-drums, while sections and soloists took it in turns to snake languorously in and out of the one disturbingly beautiful tune.

  ‘The viola player’s problem in Boléro is keeping awake,’ Candy had warned Flora.

  But instead, as the entire string section put down their bows and plucked their instruments like flamenco guitars, the sound made Flora burst with pride. She suddenly felt part of the great heartbeat of the orchestra as the music slowly swelled to a stupendous climax with the last clashing discord from the brass.

  ‘That’s definitely coitus non-interruptus,’ shouted Clare over the delirious torrent of applause. ‘I wish sex was as good as that.’

  It will be with Viking, thought Flora, but when she glanced round, the First Horn’s chair was empty.

  Faint with disappointment, suddenly exhausted, Flora could hardly lift her bow during the carols; and, as the last notes of ‘Adeste Fideles’ died away and the audience, now in party mood, called for encore, Viking was still missing.

  ‘Buggered off on some date,’ sighed Candy.

  Meanwhile, outside the conductor’s room, Miles was having a row with Abby, Julian and a large black-and-white pantomime cow.

  ‘We rehearsed “The Shepherd’s Farewell” as an encore,’ Miles was saying angrily.

  ‘The audience expect Rodney’s cow,’ said Abby firmly. ‘She’s a Christmas fixture.’

  The cow nodded in agreement and rubbed its furry head against Abby’s arm.

  ‘You can’t lower the tone,’ ordered Miles, ‘not with the Arts Council present.’

  ‘Bugger the Arts Council,’ said the back of the cow, doing a high kick. The front of the cow let out a high-pitched giggle, leaving no doubt as to its identity.

  ‘Shut up,’ hissed Miles glancing round in terror. ‘Gilbert and Gwynneth were backstage earlier. If you don’t play “The Shepherd’s Farewell”, Abby, heads will roll.’

  The shouts of encore and the stamp of feet were growing in volume.

  ‘Come on, you guys,’ said Abby defiantly, waltzing off towards the stage.

  ‘Miserable old bugger,’ said the back legs, as the cow lumbered after her.

  ‘I’ll have you know, I’m still here,’ said Miles furiously.

  Such screams of joy greeted the arrival of the cow on stage, that it was a few minutes before Abby could make herself heard.

  ‘Sir Rodney is really disappointed not to be here to wish you all a merry Christmas —’ the audience gave a great cheer – ‘but he’s a lot better, right? And he hopes to be back on the rostrum some time next year.’

  ‘Bravo,’ shouted everyone.

  ‘Meanwhile, he’s sent you a very special soloist.’

  The cow did a soft-shoe shuffle to more deafening cheers.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Cow,’ continued Abby, ‘are you going to play us a tune?’

  Slowly the cow nodded, batting her long black eyelashes.

  ‘What about some Mozart or perhaps some Beethoven?’

  The cow shook her head.

  ‘Or some Schoenberg.’

  For a second the front of the cow deliberated, wondering whether to drop the back legs in it, then slowly she shook her head again.

  ‘I know,’ said Abby over the howls of laughter, ‘can you play us some Tchaikovsky?’

  The cow nodded frantically, and next moment the back half launched into the beautiful French horn solo from the second movement of the Fifth Symphony leaving absolutely no doubt as to his identity either, and the audience went beserk.

  But when Flora finally escaped from the platform, she couldn’t find Viking anywhere. Aching all over but most of all in her heart, she trailed off to congratulate Marcus.

  She found him in a daze; the last well-wisher had only just left.

  ‘The good news is,’ he told her, ‘that George Hungerford has decided to junk Benny and book me for Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto at the end of February.’

  As Flora whooped and hugged him, an inner voice chided her that both Abby and Marcus were getting on with their careers and she was getting nowhere, not even to first base with Viking. Bitterly ashamed of being mean spirited, she was doing a war dance round Marcus, when he continued: ‘And the bad news is that Sonny is a serious bum-bandit and wants me to have dinner with him.’

  ‘Omigod, you’ll never cope with Peggy as a mother-in-law. Let’s rush off and have an Indian,’ said Flora.

  Viking had obviously been playing games, she thought despairingly.

  FORTY-TWO

  Flora’s fears were confirmed as she and Marcus ran towards the car-park, and rounding a corner, stumbled on Viking and Serena Westwood in a huddle.

  Seeing Flora, Mr Nugent bounded forward joyfully. Viking had his back to her, but, catching sight of her red hair reflected in the window, he reached behind him and grabbed her hand.

  ‘Serena, you haven’t met Flora, she’s a dote.’

  ‘A dote?’ Serena looked puzzled and not very pleased.

  Sliding his arm round Flora’s shoulders, Viking drew her against his long hard body. His hair was still wet from the shower – he had shaved off this morning’s stubble.

  ‘A little dote,’ he added caressingly. ‘Dotey’s the adjective, it’s an Irish word,’ he curled a warm palm round Flora’s neck, ‘means that everyone dotes on her.’

  ‘How nice for Flora,’ said Serena crisply. She’d heard differently from others. ‘Hallo, Marcus,’ she added with considerably more warmth. ‘You played beautifully.’

  ‘And Hatchet Hungerford’s just booked him to do Rach Three in Feb,’ beamed Flora. It was incredible that Viking’s hand on her neck could cure all her aches and tiredness in a second. ‘So we must celebrate.’

  ‘We certainly mosst, that’s tremendous,’ Viking clapped Marcus on the shoulder. Then, turning to Serena, added, ‘Have a good Christmas, darling, let me know what you decide.’

  As he led Flora and Marcus towards the car-park, he explained.

  ‘The playback of the Requiem was so dire, Serena and George have decided to reschedule it with L’Appassionata conducting.’

  ‘Abby’ll be knocked out,’ said Marcus in delight.

  ‘And with Julian back as leader so he can play the big violin solo.’

  ‘Bill Thackery will shoot himself,’ said Flora.

  ‘Save everyone else doing the job.’

  Outside, six inches of snow had blanketed everything: cars, houses, railings, lamp-posts, each blade of grass. To this, a heavy hoar frost had added a diamanté sparkle, so the great horse-chestnuts in the park seemed like glittering white clouds beneath a clear starry sky. Cyril’s bird-table had become a wedding-cake awaiting decoration and across the town, the cathedral gleamed like a vast lurking iceberg.

  Nugent went beserk, tunnelling his snapping snout through the snow, leaping in ecstasy, emerging with a white-powdered wig on his furry black head. Having sent him hurtling across the park after a snowball, Viking scooped up more snow, hardened it into another ball and closed Flora’s hands round it.

  ‘Josst feel it melting like my heart,’ he whispered, then turning to Marcus, said, ‘Sorry, mate, I can’t control myself any longer.’

  Looking up, Flora was amazed to see the amused tenderness softening his thin face and narrowed eyes. His hair gleamed as gold as Mars in the moonlight. As he took her hot flushed face in his long Jack Frost fingers, she could smell the faint apple blossom of Giuseppe’s shampoo, taste toothpaste and feel the snowball clutched in her hands melting like her entrails.

  Then he kissed her, first very slowly, his tongue flickering over he
rs, then harder and harder, a mixture of deliberation and such passion that Flora, arching against him, felt like a bonfire bursting into sudden spontaneous flame in the middle of the Antarctic.

  Not having the superior breath control of a brass player, she had to pull away first but kept her eyes shut.

  ‘Is it really you?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Oh Viking.’

  ‘I am otterly, otterly hooked,’ he murmured into her hair.

  Flora jumped as, like a rug suddenly laid over her knees, she felt Nugent leaning against her, gazing up with shining eyes, his tail sweeping out a black fan on the white path.

  ‘I’m enjoying watching Gone with the Wind,’ called out Marcus through blue lips, ‘but I’m about to freeze to death.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, I’m sorry,’ said Viking.

  As his BMW slid round the Close, icicles were glittering from the red roofs of the Queen Anne houses, magnolias and ceanothus in the front gardens buckled under their burdens of snow.

  ‘God knows how they got a licence for this place,’ said Viking, as he pulled up beside a club called Close Encounters which was pounding out reggae music. ‘Someone must have greased Planning Officer Cardew’s palm again.’

  Inside, through the gloom, the Celtic Mafia, Cherub, Noriko, Clare, Candy and Nellie could be seen getting plastered, drinking half-pints of wine out of little jugs, coughing in unison and collapsing in laughter at their own jokes.

  Once Viking and Marcus had sat down beside them, Dixie started acting up; he had taken a great shine to Marcus, and had them all in stitches offering to turn the pages of his menu for him, then handing it to him upside-down.

  ‘He’s Sonny’s Valentine, sweet Sonny’s Valentine,’ sang Randy.

  Everyone howled again.

  ‘We have got some catching up to do,’ sighed Viking, looking sympathetically at Marcus.

  Returning from the Ladies, Flora took a slug of wine and nearly spat it out.

  ‘Ugh, it’s corked.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve just cleaned your te-heeth,’ said Clare slyly. ‘Even Krug tastes vile after Colgate.’

  ‘We ought to invent a drink mixing them,’ said Marcus, ‘and call it Buck Teeth.’

  ‘And Gwynneth could do the ads,’ said Flora.

  So everyone stuck out their teeth like Gwynneth and giggled hysterically.

  ‘To stop arguments, I’ve ordered lasagne for everyone,’ said Blue.

  When the band took a break, the RSO, to the other diners’ amazement, took over. Randy seized a trumpet, Nellie and Noriko picked up guitars, Cherub sat down at the drums, Marcus was persuaded to play the piano, as they swung into Boléro.

  Blue didn’t want to dance, so Dixie got up with Candy and Clare, Viking and Flora followed them.

  Viking was a wonderful dancer, he had the endless legs, and narrow rubber hips that slide into any rhythm.

  ‘Dum, de-de, dum, de-de, de-de, de-de, dum de-de-dum,’ sang Flora, writhing like a charmed snake in front of him, her hips occasionally grazing his body, her black skirt and red hair flying.

  ‘Marvellous beat to fock to,’ Viking drew her against him, rotating his pelvis against hers.

  ‘OK, Marcus?’ gasped Flora as she emerged from his embrace two minutes later with buckling knees.

  What would she have done if I’d said I wasn’t, wondered Marcus, as he idly picked out the first subject of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto – moody, mysterious, impossibly difficult music. He wished he could go home and look at the score, which he had only two months to learn. It would be like taming a dragon.

  He’d prayed for a break like this for so long, but looking across at Viking and Flora, he felt hollow with loneliness and would have given every note of the concerto to be able to wipe Abby out with the same white-hot passion. Marcus sighed. Viking had a terrible reputation. He did hope Flora wouldn’t be hurt again, and Abby was going to be insane with jealousy when she found out. What an awful lot of pieces to pick up.

  The band and the lasagne arrived at the same time. Neither Viking nor Flora wanted theirs, so Nugent ate both.

  ‘It’s such years since anyone put me off my food,’ said Flora happily.

  Turning towards her on the bench-seat, blocking out the others’ view with his broad back, Viking removed her mantilla from her left shoulder, examining a row of long scratches.

  ‘Jack Rodway do that?’

  ‘No Scriabin – he thinks he’s a witch’s cat, and takes flying leaps onto my bare shoulders.’

  ‘Locky Scriabin,’ Viking kissed the longest scratch. ‘Why’d d’you go to bed with Jack?’

  ‘I needed a practice fence.’

  ‘I was so opset.’

  ‘You’re so glamorous,’ Flora ran a finger along his jutting lower lip. ‘One can’t imagine you upset about anything except playing badly or not uniting Ireland.’

  ‘I’ve dreamt for a long time of being united with Flora.’ As insistent as the Boléro beat, his hand was stroking the inside of her arm, her jawline, her earlobes.

  Then she told him about Carmine trying to rape her.

  ‘Jack was the escape route, he had a green Exit sign on his forehead, and a push bar at his waist.’

  Viking laughed. Only by his hand tightening on her shoulder did he show his fury.

  ‘The basstard,’ he said slowly, ‘and he keeps his wife in a veal crate. Cathie didn’t have flu, he broke her jaw.’

  ‘Omigod, is that why Blue’s so down? They ought to elope, she’s so good, she could easily support herself.’

  ‘Carmine’s ripped away every thread of her self-esteem.’

  The waiters were back with menus offering puddings.

  Viking shook his head. ‘I’m having a pause.’

  ‘You’re going through the male menu-pause,’ said Flora, falling about at her own joke.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Viking pulled her to her feet, ‘I have to fock you.’

  Outside it had snowed and frozen again.

  ‘D’you think I’m too dronk to drive?’

  ‘Frankly yes,’ said Flora swinging round a lamp-post. ‘If you even looked at a Breathalyser it would play “The Drinking Song.”’

  ‘Why don’t we try one of these bikes?’

  Hearing a loud bang outside, the others, who’d started trashing the place, rushed out swinging lavatory chains, to find Nugent barking, Flora giggling in the snow, Viking sitting beside her rubbing her laddered knees and an ancient blue bike on its side with its wheels going round and round.

  After that everyone had a go on it, drink insulating them against the cold, their shouts of laughter sending windows shooting up all round the Close. Any grizzled head foolish enough to emerge was pelted with snowballs. Cherub was so drunk he kept climbing into the engine of Dixie’s car. Clare kept patting a black litter-bin, mistaking it for Mr Nugent. As Flora had another go, the seat shot upwards, nearly depositing her on the ground.

  ‘It’s a Fanny cycle,’ she shrieked, narrowly avoiding a pillar-box. ‘Oh Gilbert, Gilbert, oh fa la, la, la.’

  ‘Stop that noise,’ said a ringing voice from above.

  ‘Oh fuck off,’ said Randy. ‘It’s my turn now, Flora.’

  Vaguely Marcus remembered he had been invited to a wassail party in the Close.

  Clambering on board, Randy set off guiding the bike with one hand, swinging a Close Encounter lavatory chain with the other. Shooting across the grass in the centre of the square, straight through a bed of sleeping wallflowers, he hit the fountain where Charles I had refreshed himself during the Civil War with an almighty bang.

  The bicycle was a crumpled heap, the fountain in intensive care, the imprint of Randy’s huge body lay etched in the snow, but remounting, the intrepid trumpeter shot off down the path, falling off again, so the bike carried on up a ramp, and disappeared through the door of some ecclesiastical building. This was followed by another loud bang to the accompaniment of police sirens.

  ‘Quick,’ Viking sei
zed Flora’s hand. ‘They segregate the sexes in police cells.’

  Very slowly Viking drove back down the middle of the road. Snow on top of hoar frost had fluffed up the trees on either side like cherry orchards in bloom. Huge flakes drifted down soft as butterflies.

  ‘Your place or mine?’ asked Viking.

  ‘Oh yours,’ said Flora, remembering the compost heap of her bedroom and that Abby would be home.

  Viking kissed one of her hands.

  ‘So young and soft,’ he said mockingly.

  ‘Hands that don’t do dishes, I’m afraid. I’m an awful slut.’

  ‘But the nails are bitten – I noticed that at your audition. You smiled, pretty as a daffodil. You played In the South to tear the heartstrings. But I knew you were sad.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ squeaked Flora, jumping as the top of the car scraped against some bowed-down branches.

  ‘Who hurt you?’

  ‘Oh Christ, a guy called Rannaldini. I was terribly young – I can’t talk about it.’

  ‘I’ll kill anyone who hurts you.’ Somehow Viking manoeuvred the car into the lane down to the lake, skidding most of the way.

  ‘I’ll exorcize Carmine, I’ll exorcize Rannaldini,’ he added dismissively.

  ‘Better buy me an exorcize bicycle,’ said Flora.

  Between towering beeches, like ice cliffs, the lake glittered in the moonlight, arctic white along the frozen edges, but with a dark badger stripe of flowing water down the centre.

  ‘I’ve always wondered what this house looks like inside,’ said Flora, getting out of the car.

  The ground floor of The Bordello trebled up as a kitchen, dining-room and drawing-room. Shabby, different coloured armchairs and a dark blue sofa were grouped around an open fireplace with a huge television set on the right. Chucked into a corner were golf clubs, tennis rackets, cricket bats, an old saddle, football and cricket boots. A not-often-scrubbed table by the oven was weighed down with old newspapers, Racing Posts, Sporting Lifes, Clare’s Tatlers, scores, books, shoulder pads, unopened bills.

  Flora’s eyes, however, were drawn up to an old-fashioned clothes-horse, from which hung white evening shirts and a rainbow riot of clothes, no doubt belonging to the women in Viking’s life.