by Jilly Cooper
In his pretty house in the Close, Julian had also seen the helicopter land. Knowing that Rannaldini would spend at least ten minutes primping in his dressing-room, he picked up the score of The Creation. He loved the joyful tunes, the celebration of nature, the exuberant orchestration full of ravishing woodwind solos, which enhanced but never overwhelmed the singing. Every day during its composition, Haydn had knelt down and prayed to God to ‘strengthen me for my work’. God had answered his prayers.
The last time Rannaldini and Julian had met, Julian had been sitting in the leader’s chair in drag. Aware that his job, and the house in which he and his family had been so blissfully happy, might at any moment be taken away from him, Julian fell to his knees, praying that he might keep his cool and have the courage to protect his orchestra.
Out of the window as he rose to his feet, he could see the RSO warming up, nervous yet thrilled at the prospect of playing under such a great conductor. The stage had been set up on the yellow, drought-dried water meadows in the shadow of the cathedral and sheltered by two huge limes, whose gold leaves trailed on the ground as if they were already in long dresses for tonight’s performance.
Twenty minutes later, the wilting musicians, still waiting for Rannaldini, were running through the recitative in which God created the animal kingdom.
Loudly and briskly Julian led his First Violins up the scale, followed by a fortissimo bellow from the bassoons and trombones. ‘With cheerful roaring, there stands the Lion,’ sang a smiling Walter.
The strings then scampered up another scale, followed by loud staccato pounces.
‘The Tiger comes bouncing in leaps from his lair,’ sang Walter.
Exactly on cue, more feline and explosively unpredictable than any tiger, Rannaldini bounded on to the rostrum. He looked magnificent, lean, fit and dark brown, as though he’d spent a month in linseed oil rather than Sardinia. Both his tan and his swept-back thick pewter-grey hair were enhanced by a polo shirt, the clear scarlet of a runner-bean flower, which was tucked into pale grey trousers. Despite his outward sophistication, all the primaeval darkness that had once covered the earth seemed concentrated in his malevolent black eyes. But as they swept disdainfully over choir and orchestra, every woman except Militant Moll, was glad she’d spent all morning, frantically pulling on different clothes, scenting, bathing, shaving legs, washing hair and putting on waterproof mascara, because Rannaldini always made women cry.
Rannaldini didn’t miss a beat when he saw Julian.
‘They told me you had come here, Mr Pellafacini,’ he said softly.
Seeing their revered leader white and shaking, fear ran through the RSO. Cyril put away his bulb catalogue, Davie Buckle his pack of cards.
Rannaldini knew every note of the score and demanded fanatical precision. His personality was so strong that musicians responded to the slightest move of a suntanned finger, the lift of a thick ebony eyebrow. A flared nostril had been known to bring entire flute sections out in a rash.
Not by a flicker of a muscle, did he now show how jolted he was by how much the RSO had improved. When it came to attack, emotion and beauty of tone they were streets ahead of the CCO.
So, as was his wont, Rannaldini tore them apart, instantly identifying the weakest musicians, ordering them to play on their own, making his beat so small, and his instructions so piano, that it was also impossible at the back to interpret them.
‘Could you possibly beat a little more distinctly, Maestro, and speak up a little,’ quavered Old Henry.
‘I speak quietly,’ hissed Rannaldini, ‘so you will concentrate more. Get a hearing-aid, old man, eef you can’t interpret my beat, how will you ever read that telegram from the Queen when eet arrives.’
Seeing Militant Moll’s pursed lips, he rounded on her.
‘And you can stop faking,’ he screamed. ‘You’re not lying underneath your weemp of a boyfriend now.’
The orchestra gave a nervous guffaw.
‘Say something, Nin,’ hissed Moll.
Ninion gazed fixedly at his oboe.
Rannaldini’s cruellest jibes were reserved for Old Cyril, who had got plastered at lunch-time. In one aria, in which God created the flowers and fruits, the horns had beautiful drifting bars of triplets.
Realizing Cyril’s trembling lip couldn’t produce a pure note, Rannaldini made him play over and over again on his own, finally suggesting Cyril replaced his French horn part with his P45. Cyril burst into tears. Mortified, the orchestra gazed at the floor. Julian clenched his fists, willing himself to speak out.
Viking was already in a bad temper. He hated the chorus resting their scores on his head, and ramming their big knees into his back. Seeing him lean over and pat Cyril’s heaving shoulders, Rannaldini realized there was a member of the orchestra still to torture.
‘Seven bars after ten, on your own, First Horn.’
Flawlessly the notes floated round the water meadows.
‘Again,’ yelled Rannaldini, ‘I want no hint of brassiness. You are not weeth the Black Dykes Band now.’
Viking played it again: perfectly.
‘You no understand.’ Rannaldini jumped down from the rostrum and picked up Julian’s fiddle. ‘Theese is how I want it.’ And he proceeded to play the phrase beautifully but with a slightly different emphasis.
Viking put down his horn and, strolling towards the rostrum, picked up Mary’s violin and repeated the phrase even more beautifully.
‘Now you play it on the horn, Maestro,’ he said insolently.
The orchestra grinned.
Rannaldini lost his temper.
‘Your section sound like donkey gelded with sceesors,’ he screamed.
On cue the sun had crept round the cathedral spire, gilding Viking’s blond mane.
‘With cheerful roaring, there stands the lion,’ muttered Clare to Candy. ‘Oh, go on, Viking.’
‘Are you speaking to me?’ drawled Viking.
‘What does eet look like?’ Tigerish, Rannaldini was poised to lash out.
‘Eeet looks awfully rude. Please don’t slag off my section like that, we are quite prepared to do anything you want, but only if you ask us nicely. Secondly the orchestra have now played for an hour and a half, I suggest you thank them and give them a break. Finally Cyril used to play in a horn section that was known as God’s Own Quartet. Frankly, you’re not fit to lick his boots.’
With Rannaldini’s screams ringing in his ears, Viking strolled off to Close Encounters which by special licence was open all day.
On his return, Rannaldini was still yelling in his dressing-room.
‘How dare you insult Maestro Rannaldini,’ spluttered Miles. ‘He says he never been spoken to like that in his life.’
‘What a good thing I was here to teach the little shit some manners.’
‘I didn’t know you played the violin,’ said Knickers reproachfully thinking of the times he had been short of a fiddler.
‘Indeed I do, Knickers, I’m Irish.’
By this time Hermione had arrived and was savaging her poor dresser. She had just been the subject of This is Your Life (who’d had an awful time finding people to be nice about her) and was also Artist of the Week on Radio Three, so you couldn’t escape the old bat, particularly if you were George. He had been excited and wildly flattered when Dame Hermione had asked if she could deal with him directly. He had never dreamt it would involve endless reversed-charged calls at four o’clock in the morning.
‘I’ve just remembered something else you can put in the programme about me, George. I’ve sung Susannah forty-eight times not forty-seven.’
And George had had to go back to the printers again because after ‘God Save the Queer’, he didn’t trust Jessica.
But Hermione still had numerous admirers. All the occupants of the Close had their binoculars trained on her heaving bosom as they pretended to do The Times crossword.
A besotted Gilbert had even shipped Gwynneth off to a crumhorn workshop in Bath for the
afternoon and rolled up with her Red Riding Hood basket filled with aubergine rissoles and a bottle of parsnip wine. Hermione accepted a glass graciously, but unfortunately Gilbert had been pre-emptied. Always on the prowl for likely lads, Hermione had taken a shine to Viking. The shine was not reciprocated. For a start, Viking didn’t like her dismissive remarks about Abby.
‘Look how happy these musicians are to be playing once more under a great conductor,’ Hermione told him, as the entire RSO, who’d all felt the need for several strong drinks, filed grinning back from Close Encounters after the break.
Hermione then started bitching about her fellow soloists.
‘I don’t know why I’m working with such people.’
‘To make money, presumably,’ said Viking, emptying the last of Gilbert’s parsnip wine into her glass.
Seeing his mistress coffee-housing with Viking as he returned to the rostrum, the ‘great conductor’ decided not to appreciate her next aria.
‘Why you make a pausa on Top E.’
‘I always make a pausa there, Rannaldini.’
‘Eef Haydn had wanted a pausa, he would have written. He didn’t write, so we do not make.’
The screaming match that ensued shocked even moony Gilbert.
‘You seeng like a strangulated parrot.’
‘I won’t sing at all if you speak to me like that,’ squawked Hermione, certainly sounding like one, and stormed off the set.
‘Menopausa,’ grinned Viking and, as Rannaldini was yelling at the cellos, carried on an argument he and Blue were having about who had bonked the oldest women.
‘I’ve had lots in their seventies,’ said Viking airly. ‘And their daughters at the same time.’
‘Bet you can’t bonk Dim Hermione on her birthday.’
‘Indeed I can.’
‘How will you prove it?’
‘You can watch from the wardrobe. Just bring some rope.’
After the rehearsal, Viking sidled up to Hermione who was still foaming over the pausa, and suggested a drink at her hotel before the concert.
Orchestras and managements all over the world had discovered if you gave Hermione a less than perfect hotel on which to vent her spleen, she was less likely to be histrionic before a performance. The Rutminster Royale was a new and fearfully expensive high-rise barracks, half a mile outside Rutminster. When asked by Hermione to collect her key, Viking, with great aplomb, asked the dopey receptionist for the key to the room above, which even better, turned out to be unoccupied.
Having kissed Hermione with Celtic fervour in the lift up (during which time she had to clench her buttocks because Gilbert’s parsnip wine was making her fart like a drayhorse), Viking thrust her into the empty bedroom.
Enraptured by such youthful vigour, Hermione murmured she must freshen up. Telling Viking to open a bottle of ‘bubbly’ she disappeared into the bathroom giving him time to smuggle Blue and an old bell rope he’d found in the vestry into the wardrobe.
When Hermione emerged, grumbling she couldn’t find her sponge bag, Viking threw her on the bed, and produced Blue’s rope.
‘I thought you might like a spot of bondage.’
Hermione’s brown eyes glittered with excitement as he tied her to the bed post. Blue was laughing so much he fell out of the wardrobe.
‘A threesome,’ cried Hermione in excitement.
To Blue’s regret, Viking then stuffed a handkerchief into Hermione’s mouth, no-one was allowed to slag off Abby except himself, and hanging a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door, he locked it, handing in the key as he and Blue left the building.
FIFTY-FOUR
No-one could find Hermione. There was no answer from her hotel room. Christopher Shepherd, her agent, supposedly on his way down from London, wasn’t answering his mobile. Fears grew that the great diva had actually carried out her threat and walked out.
‘Perhaps she’s playing Haydn-seek,’ giggled Clare.
‘Perhaps she’s been kidnapped,’ said Miles in alarm.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ muttered George. He was fed up with both Hermione and Rannaldini, neither of whom had stopped complaining. In the inside pocket of his blue-and-white striped seersucker jacket, bulky as a hidden gun, was one hundred thousand pounds in cash to be handed over to them before they emerged from their dressing-rooms tonight.
All the same, he was faced with a mega crisis. Fans in their thousands waving banners and wearing ‘I love Hermione’ T-shirts were pouring into the water meadows, unpacking lavish picnics. Close Encounters was doing a roaring trade in bottles of chilled champagne. Every seat in the stands was sold. Everyone living in the Close had turned their chairs round to watch from the windows.
Starlings making a din overhead scattered as the cathedral clock tolled seven. It was an hour to blast off.
‘Flora’s been studying the part with her singing teacher,’ said Julian. ‘She knows it backwards.’
‘And she’s got a beautiful voice,’ said Viking, who’d just rolled up looking innocent.
‘Flora has flu,’ said Miles beadily.
‘Came on very fast,’ said Hilary bitchily. ‘She was in the pub at lunch-time.’
Getting no answer on his mobile, George drove over to the cottage. The drought was in its fourth week. He had got the baking hot evening he’d prayed for.
The tractors raised clouds of dust as they chugged back and forth over the bleached fields. Collapsed goosegrass lay like brown dust sheets over bramble and nettles. As he turned the Mercedes up the rough track to Woodbine Cottage, George’s view was obscured by giant hogweed disappearing into the thick cloak of traveller’s joy. Next moment he’d gone slap into Flora and Trevor driving the other way. Flora was tear-stained and eating a Mars bar. Neither car was damaged badly. Grabbing Trevor, Flora tore back to the cottage. She was locking George out, when he put his foot in the door.
Expecting a bollocking, she was amazed when he asked her to go on in Hermione’s place.
‘Don’t be fatuous.’
‘Viking says you have a beautiful voice.’
‘Viking lied before he could talk.’
George shouted, then pleaded. She couldn’t let the RSO down.
‘Don’t pull that boy-scout number on me. Anyway I can’t go on. I look ghastly.’ Flora glared at herself in the hall mirror.
‘The make-up girls’ll patch you up,’ George was inside the cottage now.
‘And I’ve got nothing to wear. Although as I keep saying nothing’s very appropriate for Eve, why not provide fig leaves for me and Walter? Alphonso would need a rhubarb leaf,’ Flora was edging across the kitchen. ‘No prizes for guessing who’s going to play Satan.’ And with that she disappeared out through the back door.
George, who had once played wing forward for the West Riding, caught up with her, bringing her down with a fine tackle on the parched yellow lawn. For a second as they struggled he realized how thin she had become, and she discovered he was far less fat now than solid muscle.
‘Stop playing Jeremy Guscott,’ she hissed up into his battered Rotweiller face. ‘You’re not pretty enough.’
‘Ouch,’ yelled George as Trevor bit his ankle.
‘Well done Trev,’ Flora was temporarily ecstatic.
Looking down, George could see her eyes were the same smoky green as ash leaves on the turn.
‘Please, Flora, please,’ he rubbed his ankle.
For a second Flora pressed her head against his shoulder, then the tears spilled over.
‘Rannaldini won’t let me onto the platform.’
‘He’s got no option, come on, luv, we’ll all be behind you.’
‘You’re on top of me,’ grumbled Flora.
Her last defence was that she’d lost Foxie.
‘I’ll find him, go and get dressed.’
Abby’s cream silk shirt was miles too big and fell to just above Flora’s knees. She looked like a shepherd boy.
‘What about a skirt.’
‘I’ve
only got minis.’
‘OK forget it.’
‘Why don’t you ramraid Parker’s, and get me a little spangled number?’
‘You look chumpion.’ George thrust Foxie into her arms.
Only the child lock stopped Flora jumping ship, first into the lake whose surface was suddenly darkened as a black cloud moved over the sun, then onto the burnt verges, particularly when she saw the huge crowds.
Overhead drifted a lilac-and-shocking-pink striped air balloon.
‘I’ve always longed to go up in one of them,’ moaned Flora, ‘particularly now.’
But the waiting make-up girls had fallen on her like vultures, drawing her into the cathedral chapter.
‘What kind of base would you like?’
‘Preferably one that sings in tune,’ said Flora.
She couldn’t study the score, because they were putting blue drops in her reddened eyes, and then making them up. She couldn’t reply to Walter’s and Alphonso’s rather hearty assurances of support because her lips were being painted. Passionately relieved they didn’t have to compete with Hermione, they were clearly apprehensive about being landed with an absolute lemon. Sweat was flowing in rivulets down Flora’s ribs, she was shaking violently, she knew Rannaldini would screw her up, not giving her time to breathe.
‘There, you look lovely, good luck, there’s so much goodwill for an understudy,’ chorused the make-up girls.
Outside George’s fingers closed on her wrist like a handcuff.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said in surprise.
‘I look like a tart in all this slap, Eve would have no need of an apple.’
‘How are zee buttieflowers?’ asked Alphonso, whose girth was winning the battle against his white waistcoat.
Leaving her in the warder care of Miles and Walter, George steeled himself to make an announcement. Christ, the crowd was enormous, all those excited faces suddenly becoming an ugly black sea of hostility.