by Jilly Cooper
Looking disapprovingly at Abby’s ripped shirt and wild hair, from which the purple ribbon had been torn, Hermione said, as they climbed the steps to the plane: ‘You come from a different generation, of course, Abigail, who are more concerned with lights and glitter and showbiz. I couldn’t bring myself to pose nearly naked on a record sleeve. Our generation were only interested in the music.’
Abby was about to snap back that nothing mattered more than the music, when she gave a gasp of joy. One of the inside first-class seats in the left-hand row had been packed with hundreds and hundreds of scented yellow roses. Christopher hadn’t forgotten. He had done this in the early days of their affaire, when he occasionally had been unable to travel with her.
Then the Furies moved in as Hermione, too, gave a gasp of joy.
‘Who put those lovely rosebuds beside my seat?’
‘They’re for me.’
‘Mais non,’ an Air France steward shimmied up. ‘Elles sont pour Madame Harefield.’
An ecstatic Hermione then asked the steward, Jean-Claude — ‘what a macho name’ — to put the roses in water so Abby could have the seat next to her. She then proceeded to read out the accompanying card from Christopher in which he said he was so jealous of anyone sitting beside Hermione that he felt compelled to fill the seat with flowers.
‘I know he’d have made an exception if he’d known you were going to be on this plane, Abigail,’ Hermione went on graciously. ‘Then he says, let’s see, oh yes, “Meeting you, Dame Hermione,” actually I’m not a dame yet, “was like a dream come true, I can’t wait for our next encounter.”’
A ruse is a ruse is a ruse, thought Abby bleakly.
Hermione must pay excess baggage on her hand luggage, she reflected a second later, as every steward was summoned to stow away squashy fur coats, make-up bags, endless duty-free gifts ‘for my partner Bobby and our son Cosmo — I never come home empty-handed’, into every available crevice.
‘And I expect a nice glass of bubbly and some caviar, Jean-Claude, the moment we take off.’
Abby cuddled her Strad case. It was like travelling with a Renoir. She even took it into the John on flights.
Those are exactly the words he once wrote to me, she thought numbly, as Hermione lovingly replaced Christopher’s note in its little envelope.
‘By the way I’ve got a present for you, Abigail.’
Perhaps I’ve misjudged her, thought Abby, until Hermione handed over a large signed photograph of herself and a tape of her singing Strauss’s Last Four Songs.
‘I was so touched,’ went on Hermione smugly, ‘that Rupert Campbell-Black flew all the way from Bogotá to hear me in the Mahler.’
‘He came to sign me up,’ protested Abby. Oh, what was the use? ‘I must say for an older guy he’s drop-dead gorgeous.’
‘Did you notice his beautiful hands?’ said Hermione as though it was the discovery of the century.
‘Oh, get real,’ muttered Abby. ‘He’s beautiful all over.’
‘He has the most beautiful hands.’
Thank God, the plane was taxiing along the runway.
‘What’s his wife like?’ asked Abby.
‘Not a woman of substance,’ said Hermione firmly. ‘That’s why he’s drawn to, well, more sophisticated and mature women.’
‘Like yourself,’ said Abby, looking round for her sickbag.
‘Indeed,’ Hermione bowed her head. ‘Oh splendid, here comes Jean-Claude with the bubbly.’
Just managing not to throttle her, particularly when she continued to sing The Force of Destiny, Abby pretended to sleep, brooding on the tyranny of her life, bound like Ixion on the wheel of fortune-making. She had been excruciatingly homesick when she’d been sent away to Paris and Russia. She had never had time for real friendships with other girls, or going out dancing or on dates, dickering over lipsticks, cooking disgusting dinners to impress boyfriends. The grind of touring had just been bearable when Christopher had been with her. Now she only had endless hours in bridal suites to contemplate her isolation.
The final straw, when they finally reached Heathrow, was that Howie wasn’t there to meet her. Rosalie Brandon, his deputy, was full of apologies. Benny Basanovich, the agency’s star pianist, had thumped a conductor in Frankfurt, and Howie had had to fly off and sort it out.
‘He sent you his best, Abby. There’s a car waiting to take you up to Birmingham. I promised Howie’ (Rosalie looked faintly embarrassed), ‘I’d escort Mrs Harefield home to Rutminster. We’re all frightfully excited about the possibility of having her as a new client,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. You’ll love the CBSO.’
Abby slumped in the front seat of the limousine, cruising at ninety up the Ml. Outside the spring barley shivered like animal fur, cow parsley tossed on the verges, the white spikes of blossom on the hawthorn hedges rose and fell like Benny Basanovich’s fingers, lambs slept beside their mothers, cattle grazed towards the setting sun. Occasionally an adorable little village or a huge house at the end of a long, tree-lined avenue, flashed by.
All life going on without me, thought Abby despairingly.
Inside the car was as coolly air-conditioned as the bottom of the sea.
Birmingham temporarily cheered Abby up. She was deeply impressed by the orchestra and the awesome acoustics of Symphony Hall. Her hero, Simon Rattle, however, was in Vienna and the guest conductor was a charming wily old fox called Sir Rodney Macintosh. Short, balding, very rotund, with twinkling pale blue, bloodshot eyes, and a pink beaming face above a neat white beard, he wore a black smock, purple track-suit bottoms and gymshoes with holes cut out for his corns.
Normally musical director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Sir Rodney was drawing to the end of a long, distinguished career and knew everyone in the music world.
‘How did you get on with Madame Harefield?’ was his first question as he gave Abby tickling kisses on both cheeks.
‘I thought she was a cow.’
Rodney looked shocked. ‘That’s very unkind.’
Oh God, I’ve goofed, thought Abby.
‘Very unkind to cows,’ said Rodney. ‘They’re such innocent, sweet-natured animals,’ and he roared with such infectious laughter that Abby joined in.
Leading her to her dressing-room, he waddled ahead, chattering all the time.
‘Hermione didn’t go to a very good charm-school, did she, darling? If you want a laugh see her sing Leonore in plum-coloured breeches, got a bum on her bigger than Oliver Hardy.
‘I hear Rannaldini was conducting in BA’ he went on. ‘Defininitely top of the Hitler parade, darling, a cold sensualist, driven by lust that never touches the heart. Here’s your dressing-room, next to mine, which is frightfully posh and normally belongs to Simon Rattle. Like a peep?’
‘Oh yes please,’ said Abby, admiring the grand piano draped in tapestries, the sofas, the scores, the big bowl of fruit on a marble table and the photographs of beautiful children in silver frames. She would have a room just like that when she became a conductor.
Her own dressing-room was full of flowers. Christopher, she thought, with a bound of hope. But they were only orange lilies from Howie, ‘Sorry babe, catch up with you later’; red roses and ‘Good Luck’ from Rupert; bluebells and freesias from Declan O’Hara, ‘When shall we two meet?’ and finally great branches of white lilac pouring forth sweet heady scent, ‘In trembling anticipation’ from Rodney.
Abby hugged him. If only she had a grandfather like him.
‘I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes, darling.’
Abby was very nervous. She’d been up since six practising in her hotel bedroom. Between them, Rannaldini and Christopher had destroyed her confidence. But Rodney was such a tonic. Although he had been known to crunch glacier mints, filched from the leader during the cadenzas of soloists he disliked, he couldn’t have been sweeter to Abby.
‘You are an artist, dear child, play at whatever tempo you feel correct and we will accompany you.
Isn’t it splendid?’ he added, as he led her into the vast soaring hall. ‘Pity about the cherry-red chairs, ghastly colour, but fortunately here they’re always covered in bums.’
Unlike Rannaldini, Rodney was also adored by the musicians. Having kissed the leader on both cheeks, he clambered laboriously onto the rostrum, collapsed onto a chair, mopped his brow on a lemon-scented, blue-spotted handkerchief, and beamed round at everybody.
‘That’s the hard part over. So lovely to be back with my favourite orchestra. You all look so divine and play so wonderfully, it doesn’t matter a scrap I can’t remember any of your names.’
The orchestra giggled.
‘Now I don’t need to introduce this ravishing child, she’s had a frightful time in BA with Rannaldini so you’ve got to be particularly nice to her.’
The orchestra gave Abby a friendly round of applause. Artists in their own right, they were not overawed by soloists.
Rodney opened the score and raised his stick.
‘Now, please play together, boys and girls, or I won’t know where to put my beat.’
Abby’s knees would hardly hold her up in the long wait before she came in, but from her first note, magazines and books were put down, crosswords abandoned, tax returns set aside, and the musicians looked at each other in awe as the raw, sad sweetness pierced the tidal waves of orchestral sound.
‘Ravishing, my dear,’ Rodney called a halt, halfway through the first movement. ‘Brass dearies, it’d be nice if the diminuendo could be slightly more pronounced, i.e. shut up a bit.’
Then when a vital bassoon entry was missed: ‘Agonizing over ten across, dear boy, it’s Laocoon. I always have trouble spelling it, now you can concentrate on Brahms.’
Much of the rehearsal was spent telling them about Princess Diana, whom he’d sat next to last night, ‘such a charmer’, and nodding off on the rostrum while Abby and the orchestra played on regardless.
‘Which orchestra am I playing with?’ he asked, being woken by a particularly noisy tutti.
‘The CBSO, Maestro,’ said the leader grinning.
‘Ah yes. Now boys and girls, why are we so happy? Because Uncle Rodney’s in charge. Tiddle urn, tiddle urn, pom pom, it was together when I sang it.’
Rodney lifted his stick again.
He had the weirdest beat, very high and wavery like a slow drunken flash of lightning. The best maestros, like Rannaldini, had a distinct click at the bottom of the down beat, so the orchestra knew exactly when to come in. But when Rodney was on the rostrum, the leader gave a nod to start everyone off, but it was very discreet because the orchestra had such respect for him.
‘I may go to sleep in the cadenza,’ he warned Abby.
‘When shall we wake you up, Sir Rodney?’ asked the leader.
‘When you hear me snore.’
The orchestra were in stitches, but despite such jokes and the legendary blasé-ness of musicians, they all stood up and cheered Abby at the end, and they were joined by people who’d crept into the seats all over the auditorium.
Abby burst into tears and fled to her dressing-room.
‘Rannaldini should be shot,’ said the leader furiously.
Rodney mopped Abby up over a cup of Earl Grey tea, insisting she have one of the sticky cream cakes he’d bought in white cardboard boxes for the entire orchestra.
‘Don’t worry about this evening, we will get ecstatic reviews, because you are breathtakingly beautiful, and because I am old and have a beard. What an easy way to eminence — to grow a beard. If you’re free, we might have a little supper after the concert.’
‘Won’t you be exhausted?’ Abby bit into a huge eclair.
‘Certainly not, I’ll have a good sleep during the Maxwell Davies which comes after the interval. I’m off home to Lucerne in the morning.’
Abby returned to the Hyatt Hotel and followed her usual routine, eating a small bowl of pasta for lunch, which gave her time if necessary to throw it up before the concert, a precaution she’d taken since bad fish had sabotaged her in Tel Aviv. She then lay down but didn’t sleep because she kept praying Christopher might call. An hour before she had to leave for the concert, she washed her hair, then warmed up for twenty minutes in her dressing-room, changing and making up during the overture which gave her as little time as possible to be nervous.
In defiance of Christopher she put on a very short sleeveless dress, covered in midnight-blue sequins, which glittered with every movement, and wore her hair loose but pulled off her face with a crimson bow. She also ringed her eyes with black eye-liner, but left off her mascara in case the Brahms made her cry again.
Rodney had the entire orchestra and the audience in fits of laughter when he waddled on to conduct the overture from Il Seraglio, and sent one of the cymbals flying with his big belly.
His jaw dropped ten minutes later when he popped in to collect Abby.
‘Dear God, child. What a smasher you are. I ought to wave a sword rather than a baton to drive them off.’
‘And you look great too,’ sighed Abby. ‘I love that black-and-silver cummerbund.’
‘Madame Harefield,’ said Rodney acidly. ‘Couldn’t think where I’d found one big enough. If that woman were bowling for England, we’d have no difficulty retaining the Ashes… Tiddle om pom pom. Don’t be nervous. Birmingham’s in for a treat.’
Although Rodney dozed off twice in the first movement, he managed to wake up and bring the orchestra in after the cadenza. The audience sat spellbound by the beauty of Abby’s sound and the sadness on her face. Abby always felt the last moments of the concerto were the saddest, as the Hungarian gypsy seemed to romp down the hill, her feet, coloured skirts, earrings and dark curls flying, then suddenly to break down like a mechanical toy, and as the whole orchestra went quiet, limp stumbling through the last two bars, before the three final thunderous chords.
Invariably when Abby played, there was a long stunned silence at the end, as though it were intrusive to interrupt such sorrow and depth of emotion. Then the audience went wild, breaking into deafening rioting applause. Rodney turned, his plump hands apart, his head on one side — ‘What can I say?’ — before enfolding her in a warm, scented bear-hug.
The audience, crazy for an encore, would have gone on clapping for ages. Abby longed to oblige them, then to unwind slowly, savouring her triumph. But Rosalie Brandon, having spent twenty-four hours humouring Hermione, was back in martinet form, waiting in Abby’s dressing-room.
‘You haven’t time for an encore, you’ve got to sign CDs in the foyer, and then I’ve arranged for an interview with the Guardian, and then we’re having supper with the Independent.’
Abby loathed Rosalie being present at interviews. It had been the same when she was a kid, and her mother had insisted on staying in the room when the doctor examined her.
‘I’m having supper with Sir Rodney,’ she said firmly, ‘Christopher never stops chewing me out for not brown-nosing conductors.’
Christopher’s right, thought Rosalie beadily, Abby was definitely getting above herself.
Rodney, steaming like a pink pig in the conductor’s room as he changed into a clean shirt for the second half, gave Abby a jaunty wave as she passed by on her way to the foyer.
‘See you later, Abbygator.’
SIX
Abby regarded Rodney as far too old and gay to try anything, so she was relieved when he suggested supper in the apartment in which the orchestra put up visiting conductors.
‘You’ve been stared at quite enough,’ he announced as he emerged from the conductor’s room, wearing a big black cloak and a beatle cap tipped rakishly over one eye. He was clutching a clanking carrier bag, ‘Just a few little extras from Tesco’s,’ and singing a snatch from La Bohème. ‘Come along Musetta, devourer of all hearts.’
As they toddled across the square arm in arm, passing cafés, boutiques, pigeons huddling in the eaves and a glittering canal, the moon, slimmer than two days ago, but still sporting a rust halo, was
sailing through silvery wisps of cloud.
‘Ring round the moon means trouble,’ sighed Rodney. ‘I do hope I don’t get a tax bill in the morning.’
The apartment was blissfully warm, with a gas log-fire which Rodney immediately turned on. Looking down from the moss-green walls were portraits of music’s giants: Alfred Brendel, André Previn, Rannaldini, Giulini, Jessye Norman, Simon Rattle.
‘You’ll be up there soon,’ said Rodney, pouring her a large glass of Dom Perignon, then sitting down at the big grand piano.
‘What’s your favourite tune?’
Abby’s mind went blank.
Rodney strummed a few chords and began to sing.
‘I love Abby in the springtime,
I love Abby in the Fall,
I love Abby in the summer when it sizzles,’
then changing key and putting on a French accent:
‘Thank ‘eavens for Abigail.
For Abigail get beeger every day.
Thank heavens for Abigail.
She’s grown up in the most exciting way.’
He looked so sweet and naughty, Abby kissed him on the top of his shiny bald head.
Having installed her on a dark, gold damask sofa, with the latest copy of Classical Music, which had her picture on the front, he toddled off to rustle her up some scrambled eggs. Abby felt herself unwinding for the first time in weeks. Oh, why were all the sweetest guys gay?
When Rodney returned five minutes later, however, he was brandishing the nearly empty bottle, reeking of English Fern, and wearing nothing but a blue-and-white striped butcher’s apron. Rodney’s down beat may have been wavery, but nothing could have been more emphatic than his upbeat, which was relentlessly lifting the striped apron like a shop blind.