Appassionata

by Jilly Cooper

  Gilbert and Gwynneth, who’d come to discuss the merger, or even dropping one orchestra altogether, which would save them even more money, were very disappointed. Rannaldini had given them to understand that George would co-operate in every way.

  ‘Man’s only interested in money,’ he had told them.

  Listening to Gilbert droning on and Gwynneth smacking her pale fat lips over Miss Priddock’s ginger bread, George started fidgetting with his right hand drawer, which opened to show a photograph of Ruth. George gazed at her perfect face for a long time. Underneath was his passport.

  Gilbert and Gwynneth were even more put out, when George announced he’d have to break up the meeting because he was off to Barcelona to give the orchestra moral support.

  ‘They’re playing chumpion,’ he went on. ‘Rachel’s Requiem’s in the Top Twenty in its first week – that’s because Abby’s photograph’s on the sleeve, and I want to wish Rodney a happy birthday.’

  ‘Oh, I wish I’d sent him a card,’ said Gwynneth looking caring, and deciding to forgive Rodney for his disparaging remarks about the Arts Council. ‘I draw them myself,’ she went on. ‘People often frame my cards.’

  ‘Who will hold the fort while you’re away?’ chuntered Gilbert.

  ‘I’ll be sending Miles back,’ said George, grabbing his briefcase and car keys. ‘After all, it’s the fort what counts.’ Good God, he was even making jokes like Flora now. ‘If it’s urgent,’ he handed a piece of paper to Miss Priddock, ‘you’ll find me on this number.’

  Gilbert and Gwynneth exchanged glances. They found Miles much easier to deal with.

  ‘Don’t forget the board meeting on Friday,’ Miss Priddock called after him.

  ‘I’d no idea he was going,’ said Jessica, when she returned from the dentist – then she whistled as far as her frozen jaws would allow. ‘Golly, that’s Ruth’s number he’s left. I’d forgotten she has a house near Marbella. Perhaps they’re getting back together again. He’s been ever so distracted recently. He didn’t even shout at me when I forgot to buy his lottery tickets.’

  Eyes were getting smaller with tiredness as the R.S.O. landed at Barcelona Airport, waists growing bigger. The musicians were sleepwalking, nodding off on any available sofa, armchair or bench.

  ‘I had warbling singers on either side of me last night,’ grumbled Simon. ‘Wonder if they sell sleeping-pills off prescription?’

  ‘Wish I could buy some homesick pills,’ sighed Julian.

  ‘I cut myself shaving this morning,’ said Randy, who was still drunk from last night. ‘My red eyes have nearly gone white again.’

  ‘Baa, baa, baa,’ bleated Dixie, as the entire orchestra, like zombies, followed him blindly into the airport Gents.

  Despite Knickers racing round like a collie nipping everyone’s ankles, it was half an hour before they all meandered out to the waiting coaches, eating chocolate, reading newspapers, putting new film in their cameras. Miles was absolutely fed up with them. Half of them had overslept and nearly missed the plane that morning.

  ‘If anyone loses their boarding passes or their hotel keys, or forgets to pay their bar bills once more, their pay will be docked,’ he yelled to each coach-load in turn. ‘And tomorrow morning I want you all to line up outside the hotel at six-thirty so we can take a roll-call.’

  ‘What about a roll-in-the-hay call?’ shouted Randy from the back of Moulin Rouge. As they drove past battlements and palm trees along the seafront, Dixie yelled, ‘Don’t forget to declare Hilly.’

  ‘Sneaks and lechers, come away, come away, come, come, come away,’ sang Cherub, going into fits of giggles which set the whole coach off.

  Hilary stopped writing postcards about the cathedral in Madrid.

  ‘Why d’you all reduce everything to your own disgusting level?’ she hissed.

  You’ll pay for this, thought Miles furiously. Every single one of you.

  He was even crosser three-quarters of an hour later. As Flora was struggling up the steep, narrow cobbled street to the hotel, weighed down by a heavy suitcase, her viola and a large bottle of Fundador, presented to her by a waiter last night, she felt a hand taking her suitcase and turned in amazement. No musician ever carried anyone else’s stuff. Then she dropped the Fundador with an almighty crash, for there stood George, sweating in a pin-striped suit, and blushing as much as she was.

  ‘I thought you were in Rutminster?’

  ‘I was. I thought I’d come and wish Rodney many happy returns.’

  For a moment they gazed at each other as brandy streamed down the street.

  ‘Sorry about the bottle,’ said George, clicking his fingers at the hotel porter to come and sweep it up.

  ‘Oh, it’s just good, clean Fundador,’ said Flora, belting into the hotel.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Viking, Dixie, Blue and Randy, who’d been following Flora up the hill.

  ‘That’s going to cut down our fun and games,’ said Blue, dropping to his knees and pretending to lick up the Fundador.

  ‘Why the hell isn’t he at home running the orchestra?’ said Dixie.

  ‘Into the ground,’ said Randy.

  Disloyally, they forgot that if it hadn’t been for George’s indefatigable fund-raising efforts they would never have been able to go on tour.

  ‘Perhaps he’s after Abby,’ said Dixie.

  ‘Well, he’s not going to win the two grand,’ snapped Viking.

  ‘No, he’s after the Steel Elf,’ said Randy.

  As Hilary handed her postcards to the hotel receptionist Viking noticed the top one was to Rannaldini in Czechoslovakia.

  ‘Our shit has reached Bohemia,’ he muttered to Blue. ‘I reckon Gilbert, Gwynneth, Rannaldini and Miles are all in cahoots. I better have a serious word with Rodney.’

  Miles was absolutely livid to be dispatched home by George. Telling Hilary to keep an eye on things and chronicle every misdemeanour, he flew northwards to Rutminster freezing like an iceberg as he went.

  Tiredness was forgotten as the orchestra dumped their bags and surged off in great expectations to meet Rodney.

  The beautiful little palace of music could have been designed especially for Rodney’s birthday. Stucco horses with rolling eyes romped high above the stage. Seats rose in tiers fantastically decorated with different coloured sugar tulips. From a ceiling, embossed with scarlet-and-white roses, hung a vast Tiffany lamp, glittering with amber, emerald and kingfisher-blue glass. On the faded terracotta mural, curving round behind the stage, garlanded nymphs in long flowery dresses played flutes and harps, violins and triangles, their eyes closed in deepest trance, bewitched by their music.

  ‘What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? . . . What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?’ murmured Flora, trying to tighten her strings with a trembling hand. What the hell was George doing here?

  Rodney’s dressing-room was already piled high with coloured envelopes and brightly wrapped presents. The RSO had clubbed together and given him a Victorian station-master’s cap and a new midnight-blue velvet cloak with a cherry-red lining. A huge iced cake in the shape of a train carrying eighty candles would be wheeled on after the concert. A florist was busy weaving dark red roses and white jasmine in and out of the rostrum.

  ‘It’s unlucky to use red-and-white flowers,’ said Miss Parrott in alarm.

  But her concern was drowned in a deafening cheer as Rodney shuffled on, Beatle cap over one eye, leaning heavily on George’s arm. The musicians who’d worked with him in the past were shocked how he’d aged, particularly when they saw what an effort it was for him to climb onto the rostrum and collapse into his chair.

  But as they launched into ‘Happy Birthday’, specially orchestrated by Peter Plumpton, Rodney struggled up from his chair, stretched out his arms, putting his head on one side, and smiling with such sweetness and roguish delight, they were all reassured.

  ‘Oh my dear children —’ wafting English Fern, he mopped his eyes with a lemon-yellow silk handkerchief – ‘you
have no idea how excited I am to see you all again, and some, too, I haven’t met before: great artists.’ He beamed down at Julian and Dimitri. ‘Learning the cello myself has taught me how clever all you string players are.’ Then, glancing at the back of the First Violins, continued, ‘and you, pretty child, must be Noriko, and that lovely little redhead must be Flora.’

  Aware of George watching from the stalls, Flora cringed into the violas with a weak smile.

  Then, to even louder cheers, Rodney whipped out a ‘Save the RSO’ banner, waving it above his head.

  ‘We’ll have no more talk of mergers. I have written to my friend, John Merger —’ the orchestra giggled in delight – ‘telling him it’s simply not on. What are they going to call this merged orchestra? The RSCCO? – stands for Royal Society for the Continued Cruelty to Orchestras – sums up that gruesome twosome, Gilbert and Gwynneth. I hope their ears are burning because I’m flying back to Rutminster to box them next week.

  ‘You are a symphony orchestra,’ he went on, fierce for a second, ‘and will remain so. As an encore tonight we will play the beginning of the second movement of Tchaik Five, one of the greatest symphonies ever written, with a great horn solo from a great player.’ He blew a kiss at Viking.

  ‘But as you all know that, and the other pieces, Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote backwards, let’s play the Mozart. Not a day goes by,’ he added in a stage-whisper as Abby strolled in with her fiddle under her arm to a chorus of wolf-whistles, ‘that I don’t envy you having such a gorgeous popsy as musical director. Isn’t she lovely?’

  ‘She certainly is,’ bellowed Abby’s suitors.

  As if she were shrugging off her role as conductor, Abby had abandoned her severe, often deliberately desexing gear, for a clinging orange vest and the shortest, tightest, brown suede skirt, just acquired in a Barcelona boutique. Her newly washed black gypsy curls danced loose down her shoulders. Terror and excitement simultaneously lit her glowing face: the heaven and hell of performance.

  ‘My dear,’ sighed Rodney, ‘what a time to bring those legs out of hiding. I’ll never concentrate. That was a wonderful century you made against the CCO last week, Bill,’ he went on, keeping up the patter, ‘tiddle, om, pom, pom. Did you know carthorse was an anagram of orchestra? Tiddle, om, pom, pom, ready darling?’

  Abby nodded. Surreptitiously, mysteriously, always when a great star is playing, the hall fills up. Stage hands, doormen, cleaners with mops, admin staff were already gathering in the red velvet boxes and creeping into the stalls.

  Rodney raised his baton a couple of inches and brought it down. There was an explosion of sound. Playing the lovely but comparatively undemanding horn accompaniment, Viking listened in wonder. No composer but Mozart, no musician except Abby, could express such sweetness, such caressing tenderness, such extremes of sadness and joy. He watched her breasts and golden arms quivering as her bow darted across the strings, the voluptuous swing of her suede hips, her tossing shining hair, and the rapacious absorption on her proud, hawklike face, and was filled with lust as well as admiration.

  Abby was a good conductor, but her heart constantly fought her head, like a swan struggling across land to some destination. But when she played she flew, all heart, totally committed, as bewitched as the nymphs on the wall.

  ‘We’ll be looking for a new musical director,’ sighed Old Henry, tapping his bow against Francis’s chair-back. ‘Can’t deprive the world of a sound like that.’

  As he joined in the rapturous applause, George was shocked to see how Rodney was sweating, and how much brown make-up came off on the lemon-yellow silk handkerchief when he mopped his brow. He was a ghastly colour, but outwardly full of pride and joy for his protégée.

  ‘I can die happy now,’ he told Abby. ‘The sorrow of that middle movement was almost unbearable. And if I hadn’t known you were the RSO, boys and girls, I could have sworn you were the Berlin Phil.’

  ‘It’s because you’re back, Sir Rod,’ shouted Dixie, then remembering he was trying to pull Abby, ‘and because we’ve got a great soloist.’

  George stepped forward. ‘You must rest, Maestro.’

  ‘Think I’d better, journey took it out of me. Got a lovely chambermaid as siesta-fodder back at the hotel. Got to be as fresh as a daisy for the party later. Lots of champagne, lovely grub: I can open all my presents, and we’ll all behave as badly as possible, toodle-oo everyone.’

  Waving his flag, he adjusted his Beatle cap at a more rakish angle. As he was helped down from the rostrum, the musicians surged forward to shake his hand and show how happy they were he was back.

  Clutching the door leading to the stage, he patted the head of his pantomime cow, whose furry black-and-white body was slumped over the rail waiting to take part in the encore.

  ‘Nice to see my old girl again. Got her a Swiss bell to wear tonight. Connaissez-vous Schoenberg, Madame Vache? No, that’s French, must remember to speak Spanish. Must stop this merger, dear boy, Rannaldini’s such a shit,’ he added, clapping a hand on George’s shoulder, but using it more as a support.

  Abby ran after them.

  ‘I love you, Rodney,’ she stammered.

  ‘And I you, darling.’

  ‘Was I really OK?’

  ‘Better than ever. Utterly breathtaking. Oh, there’s Charlton, how are you?’

  ‘Great, and great to see you, Sir Rod. Fanks for the Scotch, biggest fucking bottle I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘You deserve it, dear boy, after flogging all those miles.’

  ‘Oh, damn you,’ sighed Abby, as a departing Rodney wriggled like an old badger into the back of the waiting limo. ‘Why d’you always have to show me up by being so nice to everyone?’

  She never saw him again.

  In the men’s changing-room, musicians were combing hair over bald patches, running electric razors over their faces, spraying deodorant on earlier layers, cleaning teeth, fighting for the mirror to tie their ties. Those with good bodies wandered round in their underpants. Those already dressed were warming up in the passage outside the conductor’s room. Viking was playing ‘The Teddy Bears Picnic’ when George arrived, looking grim and very shaken, and dragged him into an empty-dressing room. Just as he was leaving the hotel, Rodney had died of a massive heart attack.

  ‘He was so excited,’ George’s voice cracked, ‘his last words were, “I moosn’t be late for my dear children.”’

  The colour drained from Viking’s face; for a second he clung onto a chair, his eyes closed, fighting back the tears.

  ‘Oh Jesus, I don’t believe it. Thank God we saw him one last time. This is terrible.’ Then he pulled himself together. ‘Poor little Abby.’

  ‘I better go and tell her.’

  ‘I’ll tell her. You tell the orchestra.’

  ‘Ought we to cancel the concert?’

  ‘Certainly not, Rodney’s worst thing was disappointing people.’

  The orchestra were devastated – most of them in tears.

  Steve abandoned his noisy row with Knickers about the musicians not having had long enough between rehearsal and concert.

  Abby had just emerged from the shower and was wrapped in a very inadequate olive-green towel, when Viking walked in. At first she didn’t believe him.

  ‘It’s just another of your obnoxious jokes.’

  Then she went into such raving, screaming hysterics that Viking was very reluctantly forced to slap her face before she collapsed sobbing wildly in his arms.

  ‘I know how you loved him, sweetheart, I know, I know, I’ll look after you.’

  Gradually he calmed her down, pouring her a large brandy from Rodney’s cupboard, then saying he hoped he wouldn’t get sacked for hitting the conductor.

  ‘Cut it out,’ sobbed Abby. ‘Trust you to make jokes.’

  ‘I loved him, too, sweetheart. What are you doing?’ he demanded as Abby reached for her new suede skirt.

  ‘Going to Lucerne to take care of Gisela. She’s worked for him for forty years, f
or chrissake.’

  ‘You can’t, not yet. You’ve got to go on tonight.’

  ‘Don’t be insane, George must cancel.’

  ‘Rodney would expect it.’

  ‘What about my solo?’

  ‘Mozart played it and conducted at the same time. If you prefer, Julian could play your solo.’

  ‘Like hell he will. Oh Viking, I can’t believe it.’ She broke down again.

  Hearing weeping coming from the conductor’s room, Hilary turned to Juno.

  ‘She must have been Rodney’s mistress to be so upset.’

  ‘Who’s in there?’ asked Carmine.

  ‘Viking,’ said Hilary.

  ‘Trust Viking to cash in on some poor guy’s death to win his bloody bet.’

  The next moment Blue had Carmine against the wall.

  ‘You dirty basstard,’ he hissed.

  Deathly pale in her short pink chiffon dress, Abby looked like a lost masquerader. She left the rose-and-jasmine-woven rostrum empty and conducted from the soloist’s position, from which she could see the shock and deep distress on the faces in the audience, many of whom had flown in from all over the world.

  Cathie Jones brought all her sadness to the solo in Romeo and Juliet. Abby didn’t play the Mozart that followed with as much dash as she had in rehearsal, but even though she had to conduct it at the same time, there was an added depth and sorrow.

  She’s playing a requiem, thought Viking. It was so private, so other worldly, that for a second he was so moved he felt he was going to lose it.

  Everyone was so distraught about Rodney that few people appreciated that this was Abby’s first time playing in public again.

  Mozart was followed by Don Quixote. Tears streamed unashamedly down Dimitri’s face, as he played the part of the Don, Abby nearly broke down, too, as she introduced the piece:

  ‘In the words of your greatest novel,’ she told the audience in Spanish, “I have battled, I have made mistakes, but I have lived my life the best I can, according to the world as I see it.” That sums up the Rodney we all knew and loved.’