by Jilly Cooper
Abby had changed into a very short halter-necked dress in oyster-coloured silk, which clung lasciviously to her marvellous body. Her hair, freed from its black velvet ribbon, rippled in Pre-Raphaelite abundance over her shoulders. She was still clutching her dark red roses, whose long stems dripped onto her skirt, moulding it between her thighs. She was also wearing high heels which enabled her to see over the crowd to where Christopher was having a competition with Hermione to see who could crinkle their eyes at one another the more engagingly.
Rupert, half-listening to the ancient Italian Ambassador, who like all ambassadors seemed to have once had an affaire with his mother, was tall enough to watch Abby over the crowd. She looked wild, vulnerable and on the brink of tears, as she made heroic attempts to scintillate on the Perrier Christopher had forced on her, politely signing programmes and answering silly questions about how she got such a lovely shine on her fiddle. When the fifteenth person asked how she managed to memorize so many notes, she finally flipped and snapped back: ‘By learning them.’
As Christopher was still arched over Hermione, about to free fall down her cleavage, Abby slid out of the group of admirers, across the room, and onto the balcony where Julian Pellafacini had commandeered a bottle of Beaujolais and was quietly getting drunk. Easily the most diplomatic person in the room, who had spent his entire career keeping the peace between troublesome conductors and temperamental players, Julian had suffered this afternoon the almost unique humiliation of being bawled out three times by Rannaldini in front of the orchestra.
Emptying Abby’s Perrier over the balcony, he filled up her glass with red wine. After the stifling room, it was blissfully cool. Abby breathed in a smell of damp earth, moulding leaves and the distant reek of bonfires. The full moon was untangling itself from the trees, a round gold ball for Orion’s dogs to play with.
‘Where’s Rannaldini?’ she asked.
‘Taking a conference call from Japan, or so he says.’
With his blond hair even whiter in the moonlight, and his long pale kindly face, Julian looked like the ghost of Abraham Lincoln who’d had a premonition he was about to be assassinated.
‘Rannaldini was so god-damned charming when he was guesting,’ he said bitterly, ‘that the orchestra, particularly the young players, were knocked out when he got the job. Now they’re shell-shocked — like a bride waking up on the first morning of her honeymoon to find her handsome young groom’s turned into a werewolf.
‘Rannaldini met the Second Flute outside the elevator this evening. “Alio leetle girl,” he purred, “I ’aven’t made you cry yet ’ave I?“’ Julian shuddered and filled up his glass.
‘He’s a lousy conductor,’ said Abby scornfully. ‘He only gets edge-of-seat performances because no-one knows what he’s going to do next. If you hadn’t held the first violins back in the last movement, I’d have come off the rails.’
When she told Julian about the proposed record deal with Rannaldini and the New World he was delighted.
‘The orchestra would love it, they thought you were terrific.’
‘Christopher didn’t,’ sighed Abby.
‘Then you need a new agent,’ said Julian angrily. ‘Christopher once tried to get me on his books. I’d probably be as famous as Zukerman or Perlman but I found him,’ he chose his words carefully out of kindness, ‘too — er — forceful.’
‘I’ve grown accustomed to his force,’ sighed Abby.
She jumped as the french windows opened, but it was only a waitress after Abby’s autograph.
‘We’ll trade it for another bottle of red wine,’ Julian emptied the remains into Abby’s glass. ‘Where are you going next?’
‘England,’ said Abby unenthusiastically.
‘Christ, I’d love to work there. If I were single, I’d take the next plane. But the workload’s insane. You have to work twice as hard for half the money. I’d never see Luisa and the kids. But my dream is to end up in the Cotswolds, leading some West Country orchestra.’
‘I’ll join you. Are you coming to dinner?’
Julian shook his head.
‘I’ve got to rally the troops, stop them topping themselves or getting so drunk they don’t make the plane tomorrow.’
The orchestra was off to Rio in the morning.
‘But let’s keep in touch, I don’t want Christopher to stamp out that individuality.’
Looking up at the sky Abby noticed a drifting fleece of white cloud had put a great ring of mother-of-pearl edged with rust around the moon.
‘That moon’s got exactly the same round-eyed, round-faced pseudo-innocence as Hermione,’ said Abby, putting Julian’s card in her bag. ‘God, she’s hell.’
‘Hell,’ agreed Julian. ‘The number of times I’ve seen her jab another soloist in the foot with her high heel to steal a bow.’
Through the french windows, Abby could see her agent putting his empty glass of Perrier on a tray and picking up a full one.
He’ll dump me for Hermione just as effortlessly, thought Abby in panic. Hermione, who talked too much to drink a lot, was merely bending over the silver tray to check her reflection.
‘Placido is one of the only top-flight singers like me,’ she was telling Christopher, ‘who doesn’t have an agent, but his wife is very supportive. If my partner Bobby wasn’t so busy running the London Met-’
Despite having Christopher’s full attention, she was miffed that at the other end of the room Rupert was being happily propositioned by the ravishing wife of the Chilean Ambassador, and that Julian Pellafacini, who should also have been paying court, was out on the balcony with that sluttish Abby. Despite the tropical heating, Hermione gave a theatrical shiver.
‘Could you possibly close those windows, Christopher, I daren’t catch cold. As Placido’s always saying, one’s voice is a gift from God, one has a responsibility.’
But Christopher had already crossed the room.
‘Come inside at once,’ he ordered Abby furiously. ‘You’re supposed to be working, and you’re putting Hermione in an awful draught. How can you be so selfish?’
‘I figured you were keeping her warm with all that hot air,’ replied Abby.
Julian laughed. Christopher glared at him. The moment he’d signed up Rannaldini, he’d make sure Julian got the boot — particularly as now he was wearing one of Abby’s red roses in his buttonhole.
Grabbing Abby’s arm, Christopher frogmarched her across the room.
‘The French Ambassador’s wife wants a word about a charity gala.’
‘I don’t want to talk to her, right?’
‘You ought to do more for charity.’
‘I do a great deal too much for Help the Agent.’
Christopher turned purple.
‘What has got into you?’
‘You — you’ve been so mean.’
‘You’ve got to learn to take criticism,’ hissed Christopher. ‘Aaah, Madame Ambassador!’
Seeing Christopher belting back to Hermione a second later, Rupert decided to take the bullshitter by the horns. Trapping Christopher against a large yucca plant, he introduced himself as the chairman of Venturer Television.
‘Why won’t you answer Declan’s calls?’
‘No point,’ said Christopher dismissively. ‘Abigail’s diary hasn’t got a window in the next three years.’
‘She talked to Time. Declan’s the best interviewer in the world. Only take a day. Declan could come to you.’
‘We’d be talking six figures,’ said Christopher grandly. Then, at Rupert’s look of disbelief, added: ‘Every thirty seconds someone buys one of Abby’s records, OK? We can get those kind of bucks anywhere, and 20 per cent of any overseas sales.’
‘Declan sells worldwide.’
‘So does Abigail. She was in New Mexico yesterday, she’s off to the UK tomorrow, then Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, Tokyo, then back for a charity gala in New York.’
‘Declan could meet her in any of those-’
‘Hermione my dear, your drink needs freshening,’ and Christopher was gone leaving an enraged Rupert in mid-sentence.
Christopher controlled Abby’s media appearances. He knew there must always be something exciting on the horizon to tempt the record stores, but he had no intention of letting Declan loose on her. The publicity would have been sensational. But Abby was much too impulsive and unguarded, particularly after a few drinks. With a grand inquisitor, like Declan, she could easily break down and dump about her long affaire with Christopher and her guilt about Beth.
FOUR
Outside a taxi was waiting to take them to Wellington’s. Having installed himself in the front and Abby and Hermione quivering with animosity in the back, Christopher was enraged when Rupert sauntered down the embassy steps and jumped in beside Abby.
‘Hi,’ he kissed her cheek, ‘my name’s Rupert Campbell-Black. Hermione invited me along.’
‘Rupert comes from my neck of the woods,’ said Hermione reverently.
Christopher knew exactly whose neck he wanted to wring.
In the dim light, Abby was instantly aware of a flawlessly carved profile, only softened by a beautiful curling mouth, and an iron-hard thigh rammed against hers, because Hermione’s bottom had taken up so much of the back seat.
‘And you deserved every one of those red roses, darling,’ murmured Rupert, making a V-sign at Christopher’s rigidly disapproving back. ‘Where’s Signor Ravioli?’
Hermione laughed heartily. ‘You mustn’t tease him, Rupert, he’s taking a conference call from Tokyo and meeting us at Wellington’s.’
Rannaldini, in fact, was not ringing Japan but pleasuring the Second Flute in the conductor’s room, and then dispatching her to do his packing at the Hilton. He looked as smooth as hell when he arrived at the restaurant having changed into an ivory silk shirt and a black blazer, with a huge wolf coat slung around his shoulders. But the smug post-coital smile was promptly wiped off his face when he saw Rupert and there was a dangerous moment beneath a large portrait of the Duke of Wellington wearing too much lipstick, when they met face to blue-spotted tie, because Rupert was so much the taller.
‘You know Rupert, don’t you Rannaldini?’ gushed Hermione.
‘No, but we have my trainer, Jake Lovell, in common,’ said Rannaldini silkily, ‘who is about to oust Rupert as leading trainer and who was a very great friend of Rupert’s ex-wife.’
Not a flicker in Rupert’s face betrayed how much he wanted to hit Rannaldini across the room.
‘And we also have Lysander Hawkley in common,’ he drawled, ‘who’s an even closer friend of your present wife, Rannaldini. I gather she’s taken up race-riding, and was last seen hurtling across country on The Prince of Darkness — perhaps Jake Lovell could give her a job, although I hear she’s expecting Lysander’s baby.’
Seeing the murder in Rannaldini’s deadly-nightshade-black eyes, Christopher said hastily: ‘Shall we go straight in?’
Dinner, as a result, was incredibly acrimonious; scenes from the Battle of Waterloo depicted on the dining-room walls were nothing to the barrage of sotto voce bitchery flashing between Rupert and Rannaldini.
Christopher placed himself between Hermione and Abby but just as he was ushering Rannaldini bossily to Abby’s other side, Rupert nipped in and pinched the seat. Not having eaten all day, he was more than a little drunk. He was fed up with Christopher for snubbing him and leaving him to pay for the taxi, so decided to irritate both him and Rannaldini by flirting with Abby.
Stung by Christopher’s earlier rejection but believing she had a night ahead and a week in the UK with him Abby had taken one incredulous look at Rupert, who was even more beautiful in the relentless overhead light, and was only too happy to flirt back.
‘Great entrance this evening,’ Rupert told her softly. ‘You and Rannaldini looked like Snow White and the single dwarf.’
Abby laughed. ‘He is single if his wife’s just left him.’
‘Couldn’t happen to a nastier man.’ Rupert unfolded her Union Jack napkin, casually caressing her thighs, as he laid it across them.
‘Why does Rannaldini detest you so much?’ asked Abby. ‘I’ve just heard him telling Christopher you were the beegest sheet unhung.’
‘I didn’t know one hung sheets any more,’ Rupert smiled blandly at Abby. ‘Mrs Bodkin, our ancient housekeeper, likes to hang them out in the wind, but I thought you Americans used massive tumble dryers.’
Abby burst out laughing.
‘You still haven’t explained why he hates you.’
‘His wife, whom he bullied and cuckolded shamelessly, has just run off with one of my jockeys. He thinks I orchestrated it.’
‘Did you?’
Rupert shook his head. ‘You should see my jockey, he’s so pretty everyone wants to ride him.’
‘Why d’you hate Rannaldini?’
‘He can’t stop flaunting the fact that his trainer is the little sheet who ran off with my first wife.’
‘Did she marry him?’
‘No, someone else.’
‘How very complicated,’ said Abby losing interest.
She was quite short sitting down, noticed Rupert, her great height was all in her legs. Her pale face was shiny with sweat, black circles hammocked the bags under the tigerish eyes. Beneath her chin and on her collar bone, her Strad had left red marks as though Dracula had been having a good gnaw. Nanny would have recommended a good dose, reflected Rupert. She was far coarser than Taggie, but still hellishly sexy.
The waiters were plonking down carafes of wine. Obscuring Christopher’s view with a large vase of red dahlias, Rupert filled up Abby’s glass.
‘I know you probably hate to talk about work,’ he went on, having listened carefully to two Australian pouffs in ecstasies in the gents at the Opera House, ‘but I’ve never heard the Brahms so lyrically played. I wept in the slow movement. The last movement really captured the Hungarian idiom and in the first movement, I never believed passages in tenths could be so clearly executed, but with such a beautiful sound. You must have a very big stretch,’ he picked up Abby’s rather large, stubby fingers, ‘for someone with such a little hand.’
Abby blushed with pleasure. She’d written this guy off as drop-dead handsome beefcake and he really knew about music. Flustered, she snatched her hand away and grabbed a piece of bread.
‘No bread, Abigail,’ boomed Christopher, glaring through the red dahlias like Moses on the wrong side of the Burning Bush. He knew how soloists could blow up, eating to stave off loneliness in hotel bedrooms.
Biting her huge red cushiony lower lip instead, Abby studied the menu.
‘I’ll have spaghetti carbonara,’ she told the waiter defiantly.
‘You will not,’ snapped Christopher, ordering Dover sole and radicchio salad for both of them. ‘And no sauce tartare,’ he added bossily.
‘Odd denial from such a tartar,’ said Rupert, thickly buttering a large piece of white bread, sprinkling salt on it in the Argentine fashion, and handing it to Abby. ‘Rannaldini was going so bloody fast, I nearly had a bet on the last movement. How much would he earn a night for conducting?’
‘About one hundred and fifty thousand bucks.’
Rupert was appalled.
‘That’s more than my best stallion gets for covering a mare. “Con” is the operative word.’
Remembering Abby’s c.v., Rupert gazed into her eyes. They were the same pale yellow as the winter jasmine growing round the drawing-room window at Penscombe, but the irises were ringed with black, and the brilliant whites lined with the thickest dark lashes. Rannaldini had compelling hypnotic eyes, too; perhaps it was essential for a maestro.
‘I hear you want to conduct.’
‘So I don’t have to put up with schmucks like tonight.’
‘Isn’t it enough being a genius at the violin?’
‘Genius is never enough,’ said Abby haughtily. ‘I want power.’
‘Nice scent,’ Rupert buried his nose in her
wrist. ‘What’s it called — raw ambition? Your poxy agent doesn’t want you to come on Declan’s programme. You’d enjoy it. Declan’s a lovely man, and Edith Spink’s on our board. She’s a lovely man too.’
‘Spink,’ squeaked Abby in excitement, ‘I just adore her Warrior Woman Suite, a genuine talent, Spink, even if slender.’
‘I’d hardly call Edith slender. She weighed in at sixteen stone, all of it muscle, at our last board meeting. When she came to my stag-party, she drank everyone else under the table.’
‘You’re the dopiest guy.’ Again Abby burst out laughing, leaning back as the waiter laid a fish knife and fork on either side of her Union Jack table mat.
‘Don’t you have any control over your life?’ taunted Rupert.
Abby shrugged and drained her glass.
‘I live on a treadmill. Hotel bedroom, airport, concert hall, airport, hotel, recording studio, recital, back to the airport. I know the flight schedules better than the Brahms tonight. I’ve slept in the most beautiful suites in the world, but had no-one to share them with.’
‘Lay down your Brahms, and surrender to mine,’ said Rupert lightly.
Then he looked deep into her eyes, holding them, letting his own narrow slightly — corny old tricks he hadn’t played for years.
‘That is a terrible, terrible waste. How did you meet your gaoler?’
‘My dad died early. He didn’t make any dough, he never verbalized his feelings, but he cried when he listened to Beethoven and I loved him. Mom isn’t Jewish, right? But she became more of a Jewish Momma after she married Dad. She was the one who pushed me. She still calls after every concert trying to control my life. Christopher heard me playing and signed me up when I was twelve. He took me out of school in the States, found me a good teacher for a year, then packed me off to the Conservatoires in Paris and Russia.’
Rupert let her run on. It was quite interesting, and he liked looking at her face which had great strength and at her breasts rising out of the halter neck.