by Jilly Cooper
‘No, no,’ Marcus was frantic. ‘Please burn them. I’m not anyone important.’
‘You’re Rupert’s son, mate,’ said Torquemada chillingly. ‘Does he know you’re gay?’
Marcus gave a sob and dropped the telephone, leaving it clattering against the wall. He was desperately fighting for breath. Perhaps it would be better if he did die.
Choking, sobbing, he stumbled through the night back to St Theresa’s. He kept slipping on wet leaves, and fell over twice. Fortunately the foyer was temporarily deserted. Marcus tried to ring Alexei, but there was no answer. Abby would be on the way to the airport by now. Rupert was at the Czech Grand National. Marcus had read it in The Times that morning. Penscombe Pride was running in the big race on Sunday, just to prove he wasn’t past it.
Where was Helen? Marcus tried to gather his thoughts. Oh Christ, he couldn’t tell Helen.
Crawling into bed, pulling the bedclothes over his head, gasping for breath, fighting an advancing tidal wave of panic, he waited for the dawn and the army of reporters who, like a slavering pack of hounds, would tear him to pieces. How was he going to face Abby, Helen and, worst of all, Rupert?
As soon as it was light, he got up, and staggered into Appleton to get the papers. The temperature had dropped, bringing winter. The glowing horse-chestnut tree outside his room had been stripped in a day. Like a burst pipe in a distant room, he could hear the leaves rustling down in the park. As he passed the lake, there was a dull thud, and a figure leapt up in front of him. Marcus cringed, imagining a lurking reporter, but it was only a heron. Rising with flapping wings like a biplane, it carried a wriggling carp in its mouth.
I’m that fish, but without its innocence, thought Marcus in horror. It would be so much easier for everyone if he topped himself. He had to stop every ten yards to get his breath. He was wheezing like the kind of broken-winded old chaser his father would have dispatched to the knackers.
As he reached a newsagents on the edge of town the gutters were full of beech leaves like rivers of blood. In a garden opposite a large magpie strutted across the lawn. Self-satisfied, rapacious in its white tie and tails, it was just like Rannaldini. Bird of ill omen: one for sorrow.
‘Oh please, Mr Magpie, where’s your friend?’ begged Marcus, ‘Oh God, let The Scorpion not have printed it.’
‘You don’t want to read that rag,’ chided the newsagent, as Marcus picked up a copy. ‘It’s roobish. Good luck for tomorrow evening.’
‘We recognize you from the Manchester Evening News,’ said his wife. ‘Used to love your Dad when he were show jumping.’
Gasping his thanks, stumbling out of the shop, collapsing against a wall, Marcus fumbled frantically through the pages. There was nothing, thank Christ, maybe it had been some practical joke. Maybe they’d pulled the story . . . no, that reporter had known too much. He was only in remission.
He tried to act normally, but he was shaking and wheezing so badly when he finally reached St Theresa’s that Natalia persuaded him to take one of Rannaldini’s beta-blockers.
‘They’re terreefic for zee nerves, I had one before both rounds.’
Carl Matheson was worried by tendonitis.
‘I guess I better see a doctor before I rehearse this afternoon.’
Abby had stayed on an extra twenty-four hours in Philadelphia to confirm the American tour, so she could brandish the details as one glorious fait accompli in front of Miles, the board and Shepherd Denston. Nor could they winge about money. The wonderfully generous US cultural committee, coupled with American Bravo Records, had agreed to pick up most of the bill.
‘We figured we’d lost you to the UK for good, Abby,’ the chairman had told her. ‘We all feel it’s high time you brought your orchestra home.’
Abby’s eyes filled with tears every time she repeated his words. Always one track, she had concentrated all her energies on the deal in a desperate attempt to forget Viking. But now it was clinched, surely she could ask him back. The Americans would just adore him.
Appleton looked particularly bleak on such a cold wintery morning, but at least the huge begrimed town hall had been decorated by the flags of the nations in the finals. Abby was delighted an American had made it. She hoped Carl would at least come second.
She reached the Prince of Wales at ten o’clock which would give her a few hours’ zizz before rehearsing Beethoven’s Third with Han Chai at two-thirty.
There was a tray of red poppies for Remembrance Day in reception. Abby couldn’t see her pigeon hole for messages. The first asked her to call Marcus at St Theresa’s urgently. The second wanted her to call The Scorpion. Like hell she would. The third was to call Miles.
The RSO’s greatest coup for years was to be the orchestra chosen to play in the Appleton. Most of the board had flown up to bask in reflected glory. Looking round the splendid suite, for which the orchestra had forked out to enable her to give interviews, Abby decided she better ring Miles first.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ It was his Miles-below-zero voice. ‘We’ve got to talk.’
‘Can’t it wait,’ protested Abby. ‘I’ve just checked in.’
‘No, I’m coming over.’
Abby kicked off her shoes and unpacked the long slinky purple velvet dress, slit up one side, which she had brought to wear that evening, on the off-chance that among the five million viewers, Viking might be watching. She must get the housekeeper to press it. She’d have to snatch time to wash her hair after the rehearsal. She hoped Miles hadn’t organized some elaborate press conference. God, she was tired, but she mustn’t show it, although with three different concertos to rehearse and perform, it was going to be one helluva marathon. She rang down for some black coffee – ‘at once, please.’
Miles, looking almost svelte in a new beautifully cut pin-stripe suit, was accompanied by a bootfaced Lord Leatherhead. When they both grimly refused breakfast, Abby asked when the orchestra was expected.
‘I can’t wait to see them,’ she crowed. ‘I’ve got such terrific news. I’ve fixed up the most incredible American tour with record backing, OK? It’s gonna put us in the black and on the map,’ then, amazed by their still bleak expressions, she continued, ‘they’re planning to stage a Cotswold fortnight down the East Coast. They’re paying accommodation, travel, subsistence, printing and publicity. And all because they want me, right?’ Abby’s voice broke. ‘I’m gonna take my orchestra home.’
‘You’re not taking them anywhere,’ said Miles brutally. ‘You’re fired.’
They all jumped as the telephone rang. Abby snatched it up.
‘I can’t take any calls.’
But it was Marcus frantically stammering, gasping for breath, on the verge of tears.
‘Abby darling, I wanted to tell you to your face but I had to get to you before the Press do.’
Abby could hear the desperate wheezing.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’
‘I’m g-g-gay, Abby, I’m dreadfully sorry. Alexei and I’ve been having an affaire. The Scorpion have got hold of our letters. They’re going to print them. They’ll probably run it tomorrow. I’m so sorry.’
The colour drained out of Abby’s face. Her legs started to shake so violently she had to collapse onto the bed.
‘I don’t believe it. How long’s this been going on?’
‘About four months, but we’ve only seen each other twice, and it’s over now, I promise.’
‘You son-of-a-bitch,’ screamed Abby, banging her fist down on her bedside table scattering ashtrays and message pads. ‘Two-timing me exactly like Christopher did, only wanting me for the dough. You fucker! Why didn’t you break it off, instead of making a goddamn idiot of me? God, I hate you, hate you, hate you.’ Her voice rose to a hysterical scream.
But Marcus couldn’t breathe and couldn’t answer, so Abby slammed down the telephone, and sat shuddering on the bed, clenching and unclenching her hands, her eyes darting madly round the room.
Lord Leatherhead got a mi
niature brandy out of the fridge and poured it into a glass. He wasn’t enjoying this at all. When the telephone rang again Miles snatched it up. It was The Scorpion. ‘I’m afraid Miss Rosen has no comment to make,’ said Miles, then ordered the switchboard not to put through any more calls.
‘The Scorpion has already been on to us with the whole story,’ he told Abby bleakly. ‘It reflects disastrously on the orchestra. First their musical director posing naked with a lover to promote a pop record—’
‘Beattie Johnson stitched me up,’ whispered Abby. ‘She stole that photograph.’
‘But you gave her the interview. All that nauseating claptrap about being ma-a-a-dly in love,’ Miles lingered lubriciously over the word.
He’s loving this, thought Abby numbly.
‘Then we learn,’ he added silkily, ‘that you’ve both got other people and are only masquerading as lovers to push the record.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ shouted Abby. ‘I loved Marcus. I’m supposed to be marrying the guy. I didn’t know anything about him being gay.’
‘You’ve hardly been a vestal virgin yourself and your orchestra are so nauseatingly avaricious it can’t be long before one of them sells the story of you and Viking to The Scorpion.’
‘I’m not having an affaire with Viking,’ hissed Abby.
Miles gave her a pained look of utter disbelief. ‘What about the night Rodney died? There are dozens of witnesses.’
‘That was a one-night stand, everyone was plastered. Hilary was there. She probably shopped us to The Scorpion. It only happened once, for Chrissake.’
‘I find that very hard to believe. Anyway, it’s going to be all over The Evening Scorpion this afternoon, and all the other papers will carry the story tomorrow, bringing utter disrepute on the orchestra. The one thing the Press hate is being cynically manipulated.’
‘I didn’t manipulate them, right,’ Abby was hysterical. ‘I genuinely believed Marcus and I were getting married. Look, he gave me this ring,’ she held out her right hand.
‘A virtuous woman should have a price above rubies,’ said Miles sarcastically, as he selected a Granny Smith from Abby’s fruit bowl. Hilly’s new diet had done wonders for his spots.
‘I was only pushing “Madly in Love”,’ gibbered Abby, ‘because the orchestra got half the royalties.’
‘I’m afraid we don’t want your – er – ill-gotten gains.’
‘We had an emergency board meeting this morning,’ said Lord Leatherhead gently. ‘There was a unanimous vote demanding your resignation.’
‘I can see Hilly voting me out, but not Bill Thackery – Bill’s a good friend.’
‘Not so you would know it,’ Miles bit viciously into the apple. ‘He’s never forgiven you for not making him leader after Lionel left, nor for giving his solo back to Julian.’
‘Oh for Chrissake.’
‘You can’t expect to conduct the orchestra with such a scandal hanging over you,’ added Lord Leatherhead. ‘We’ll honour your contract and pay you up to the end of February.’
‘George is still chief executive. He won’t let you fire me.’
‘Having seduced a member of the orchestra almost half his age,’ said Miles fastidiously, ‘I hardly think George, or his opinion, would carry much weight. I doubt either if he’d be very interested. He hasn’t even had the manners to leave a telephone number.’
‘But I can’t let the orchestra down.’ Leaping forward, Abby clung to Miles’s new lapels. ‘Please, please!’
‘You’ve let them down enough already.’
‘Who’s going to conduct them at such short notice?’
But Abby already knew the answer.
‘Rannaldini has very kindly agreed to step into the breach,’ said Miles triumphantly.
SIXTY-SIX
At St Theresa’s, Marcus came off the telephone in total shock, wheezing in short bursts like a frantically panting dog. Oh poor darling Abby, he must get to her and stop her killing herself. He couldn’t find his puffer, he’d never make it upstairs to inject himself with steroids. No-one was about to help him. Lurching into the common room he found the score of the Schumann concerto open on the upright piano, with all his instructions pencilled in. But where he’d scribbled ‘Ped’ for Pedal, someone in emerald-green ink had turned the word to ‘Pederast’. Giving a choked sob, frantically battling for the tiniest breath, he stumbled into the hall, out through the front door, slap into a cameraman and a girl reporter.
‘It’s him,’ the reporter proffered her tape-recorder as casually as if it had been a packet of fags. ‘How long have you been having an affaire with Nemerovsky?’
But Marcus, blue in the face, could only give desperate little whimpers, stretching out pleading hands for help.
‘You sure it’s him,’ said the photographer snapping away like a jackal, ‘more like some kind of deaf mute.’
‘Probably a ruse to fox us,’ said the girl. ‘Have you told Abby yet, Marcus?’
‘Looks as though he’s having an epi. You OK, mate?’ the photographer lowered his camera.
Ducking round them, Marcus collapsed with a crash on the stone steps.
‘Christ, someone better give him the kiss of life,’ said the reporter.
‘Don’t touch him,’ shouted the doctor, who’d arrived to treat Carl’s tendonitis, then taking one look at Marcus. ‘He’s having a massive asthma attack.’
Fortunately in his car he had a portable nebulizer, a breath mask, which delivered the drug Marcus so desperately needed in tiny drops of damp air. In an attempt to rally him, the doctor also gave him a steroid injection, but Marcus was too far gone, the blue had a purple tinge now, his airways had closed up like one of Simon’s oboe reeds, and he was too weak and exhausted to draw in air through such minuscule holes.
The doctor had to make a lightning decision. It would take too long to summon an ambulance. Appleton’s little cottage hospital only worked skeleton shifts at weekends; Marcus must be rushed the ten miles to Northladen General.
‘You drive,’ he ordered the cameraman, as they laid Marcus down in the back of his estate car, ‘I’ll look after him and direct you. You telephone Northladen Intensive Care, and tell them he’s going to need a ventilator,’ he added to the reporter.
‘Who is he anyway?’ he asked as the cameraman, used to chasing Princess Di round Gloucestershire, hurtled at a steady 80 m.p.h. between high stone walls.
‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s son – what d’you give his chances?’ the reporter had kept on her tape-recorder.
‘Not a lot, he’s not responding at all, poor little sod. I wonder if he’s been taking beta-blockers, a lot of contestants do to calm the nerves. Fatal with asthma.’
Aware that they had a ‘very important patient’, Intensive Care was already all stations go. Within seconds of his arrival, to the accompaniment of bells and flashing lights, a lifeless, unconscious Marcus had been laid on a bed, and given an injection to paralyse him totally. This was so that he couldn’t resist the transparent tube which had been shoved down his throat, and which was now pumping air and oxygen from a huge black box into his lungs.
‘Christ,’ muttered the anaesthetist, glancing at the box to judge the extent of the resistance in Marcus’s lungs, ‘he’s up to eighty.’
‘Is that bad?’ asked the reporter, who, passing herself off as Marcus’s sister, had infiltrated herself into the room.
‘Let’s say a normal person’s between ten and twenty.’ Then catching a flicker of terror in Marcus’s staring eyes, the anaesthetist put on a heartier voice, ‘It’s all right, lad, we’ve had to paralyse you, only temporarily, to keep the tube down your throat. This is to sedate you, so you don’t fight against it.’ And he plunged another injection into Marcus’s arm. ‘Don’t fret yourself, we’ll soon have you breathing on your own.’
They’re lying to me, thought Marcus in panic, I’ve had a stroke, or I’ve broken my back falling over, I’m going to be trapped inside this coffin of a body
for the rest of my life. Oh please let me see Alexei once more, and he drifted back into unconsciousness.
Marcus was sinking. Sister Rose, a pretty nurse from Glamorgan sat by his bedside talking to him all the time in case he woke and panicked. Mozart piano concertos were being played to soothe him. They had tried taking him off the ventilator for short spells, but he had showed great distress and no sign of being able to breathe on his own.
‘We better alert his next of kin,’ said the anaesthetist. ‘He doesn’t seem to have any will to live, he must have had some terrible shock.’
What this was became evident when the piece on Marcus and Nemerovsky appeared in The Evening Scorpion, as vicious as it was damaging. Spectacles misted up, grey buns stood on end, as every judge in the lounge of the Prince of Wales read The Scorpion inside their copies of the Daily Telegraph and the The Times.
Although Miles had issued a brief emollient statement that Abby had resigned and been replaced by Rannaldini, it soon leaked out that she’d been fired and had vanished without trace. Both the hospital and the hotel were besieged by reporters. Helen, in a state of mounting horror, sat beside Marcus’s bed, as drips, tubes, catheters, huge black machines and most of Northladen General appeared to be fighting to save his life.
‘I know it’s difficult,’ kindly Sister Rose gave Helen a cup of tea, ‘but try not to show how worried you are, it’s crucial that Marcus is subjected to as little stress as possible.’
To complicate matters, Rupert had taken off for a twenty-four-hour break with Taggie before the Czech Grand National and, leaving no telephone number, could not be traced.
The RSO arrived in Appleton, already hot and bothered because Miles in the latest economy drive had insisted they travel on coaches without air-conditioning. As they hung up their tails and black dresses in the town hall dressing-rooms, they learnt from a distraught Charlton Handsome that Marcus was on the critical list, Abby had been sacked and Rannaldini had taken over – news that both outraged and terrified them. In one maestro stroke, Rannaldini had virtually gained control of both the CCO and the RSO.