Appassionata rc-5

by Jilly Cooper

  For a second he purred round her neck, a grey muffler, louder than any percussion player, then jumped onto the table to lick up the butter that had escaped from the smoked salmon soufflé.

  Although her wrist ached dreadfully, a great peace swept over Abby. She’d had such a good afternoon’s work. How could she have been so foul to Gisela and Rodney? It was she who needed her rough places planed with the most vicious sandpaper. She’d go into Lucerne tomorrow and buy Gisela that new winter coat she’d been talking about.

  Abby wandered over to the front window. The sun had set, leaving the lake a drained vermilion. The snowy mountains opposite had turned dark pink like summer or rather autumn puddings, as they rose out of their gold ruff of woods. To the left she could see the island where Hans Richter had practised his French horn. There were no horns in The Messiah. If only some wonderful musician could row over from the island to woo her. She was almost resigned to the loss of Christopher, she no longer jumped with hope each time the telephone rang or the post arrived. But she felt overwhelmed with sadness, like the Marschallin in Der Rosencavalier, that something she had so cherished had gone for ever.

  She jumped as Shosty, bored by salmon flavoured butter, joined her on the window-ledge, weaving against her. Putting out an idle hand to stroke him, Abby froze, whipping back her hand as though she had had some fearful electric shock; then she put it back, held it there and began to tremble violently. There was no doubt, she could feel the faint tickling of his fur against her palm. Pressing down gently she could feel the hardness of his backbone, and running her hand to the left encountered the ramrod straightness of his tail. Then she rubbed the hopelessly wasted ball of her thumb against him. No feeling there yet, nor in her fingertips. Still shaking, she put her palm down again; she could definitely feel his fur moving.

  The next moment, the front door banged.

  Gathering up Shosty, she raced downstairs screaming with excitement.

  Rodney was standing in the doorway still in his station-master’s cap, smiling guiltily. He’d spent far too much money on, among other things, a new train set. Gisela, as though catching the last rays of the sun, was proudly wearing a new red overcoat.

  ‘Oh Rodney, oh Gisela,’ screamed Abby.

  ‘Darling, you look happier,’ said Rodney, who never harboured grudges.

  On the way down the last flight, Abby lost Shosty, who, indignant at being carted in such a noisy and unseemly fashion, wriggled out of her arms and flounced off to the kitchen.

  ‘I can feel, I can feel, I can feel Shosty’s fur on my hand,’ whooped Abby, going straight into Gisela’s arms. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch, I was so scared.’

  Gisela could feel Abby’s face soaked with tears, and her desperate thinness. Her ribs were protruding like an old-fashioned radiator.

  ‘There, there,’ she stroked Abby’s heaving shoulder, ‘you will get best now.’

  Putting down his parcels, Rodney took Abby’s hand and kissed the palm.

  ‘Can you feel that?’

  ‘I can feel your beard tickling more than Shosty’s fur.’ Abby was between tears and laughter. ‘I’m gonna play the violin again.’

  ‘Richter and Wagner shared half a bottle of champagne when Wagner wrote the last bar of The Mastersingers,’ said Rodney happily. ‘We all deserve a nice bottle of Krug.’

  Appassionata. FIRST MOVEMENT

  NINE

  Abby worked for nearly two more years in Lucerne before moving to London to take a conducting course at the Royal Academy of Music. A solid roan-and-white Edwardian building, the Academy stands in the Marylebone Road, flanked by plane trees. The autumn term had already begun, but London was enjoying a very hot Indian summer. Few members of the Academy’s orchestra, red-faced from lugging heavy instruments, noticed the ‘Viva L’Appassionata’ poster hanging from the flagpole as they scuttled in through the glass front door.

  Inside, anticipation had reached fever pitch. Since her attempted suicide, Abby had achieved cult status among students who collected her old records and pinned up her posters, portraying her in her tempestuous gypsy beauty. In a materialistic world, she had sacrificed all for love.

  In the foyer, therefore, an unusual number of students, who should have been at their various classes, pretended to read notices about scholarships and forthcoming concerts. Such was the excitement that one half expected the antique fiddles to break out of their glass case and offer Abby their services, or Sir Henry Wood in his red robes to shout ‘Bravo’ from his portrait in an ante-room.

  As the clock edged towards a quarter past ten, and there was no sign of her, the students reluctantly dispersed, except for a tall boy wearing a navy-blue baseball cap to dry his hair flat, and a girl with a dark red bob, who was scornfully reading a letter which had been pinned to the notice-board:

  Dear Musicians,

  Thank you for making music with me so delightfully. I must congratulate the Academy on a super orchestra.

  With great pleasure

  Hermione Harefield

  ‘Stupid cowpat,’ muttered the girl, and getting out a biro she wrote: PS. If David, the hunky First Trombone, wants to pop in to the Old Mill, Paradise, he’ll be most welcome to a bed for the afternoon.

  ‘Flo-rah, stop it,’ chided the boy. ‘You’re going to be seriously late.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Grabbing her viola case, Flora hop-scotched across the black-and-white checked floor slap into her teacher.

  ‘Why the hell aren’t you warming up?’ he said furiously. ‘I put my head on the block putting you forward for this, don’t you dare let me down.’

  ‘Yes Mr French, sorry Mr French, promise to do my best, Mr French.’

  Flora scampered off into the Duke’s Hall where gold-framed portraits of illustrious former students looked down from paprika-red walls on to a packed audience of students, parents, teachers and talent scouts.

  Two friends had kept a seat in the back row for the boy in the baseball cap. Flora sauntered up onto the stage where the Academy orchestra, grumbling about the cold after the sunshine outside, were tuning up, practising difficult solos and runs in different directions like skaters. Both sexes were huddled in sweaters and trousers, wore clumpy shoes or trainers and no make-up. The only way you could distinguish the girls was by their long flowing undyed hair, which was mostly drawn back from high clear foreheads, although a few, in Abby’s honour, had turned up with wild Appassionata gypsy curls.

  The object today was for this year’s student conductors, who sat in a nervous nail-biting row behind the horns, to try out their skills on the Academy orchestra in the first movement of Bartók’s Viola Concerto.

  Flora was playing the solo and she and the musicians had endlessly to repeat the same bits as one conductor after another fumblingly attempted to control the orchestra and were repeatedly taken apart by a genial but highly critical professor, who sat in the second desk of the second violins with a score making notes.

  The Bartók concerto is extremely difficult, and with all the stopping and starting, the timpanist, the percussion and the brass (including Hermione’s hunky trombone player) had very little to do, except count bars between the occasional flurry of notes, which they often missed because the conductors forgot to bring them in.

  ‘You’re not keeping the orchestra down enough,’ shouted the professor to a sweating Swede, who was flapping on the rostrum as though he were about to fly through the vaulted roof. ‘We can’t hear Flora.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Flora grinned at the Japanese leader, who had a lean beautiful body and a face like a Red Indian. ‘It’s the cadenza next. I’ll need scaffolding and oxygen to reach that top A. What the hell’s happened to L’Appassionata?’

  To fox any press who had in fact been humiliatingly non-existent, Abby had been smuggled in by a back door. Shivering behind dark glasses, dying of nerves, she was dickering whether to rush out and be sick again. How could she do justice to such a beautiful piece, particularly when the or
chestra were only playing it for the first time?

  The soloist, Abby decided, was extremely good. She needed to work on her technique; she ground to a halt twice in the cadenza, and burst out laughing when during a really sad bit she’d caught a friend’s eye in the audience, but generally she executed the high notes effortlessly and joyfully and in the lower register the sound was mellow, dark and mysterious.

  She was also extremely attractive. Her figure was hidden by baggy black trousers and a thick black cardigan, but she had a clear pale gold skin, merry green eyes, a plump face ending in a pointed chin and her shining bob was the same warm burnt-sienna as her viola.

  Above all, she played with total insouciance keeping up a stream of badinage with the orchestra, chewing gum and reading her tattered poetry book every time there was a pause. Now she was sitting on the lean thigh of the Japanese leader awaiting the next victim, a plump Greek called Adonis, who had soft white hands and gold teeth to match his gold corduroy shirt. All his friends trooped round behind the brass section to video him conducting.

  ‘Like photographing the captain of the Titanic,’ murmured Flora, getting to her feet.

  Sweat was glistening on her upper lip, a russet lock had fallen away from the tortoiseshell slide. There was a chorus of wolf-whistles as she took off her black cardigan to reveal a dark green T-shirt embroidered with yellow daisies and tucked into a wide leather belt.

  ‘Vy d’you have to distract me viz striptease?’ grumbled Adonis. ‘Now don’t vorry, I vill follow you.’

  ‘I don’t vant you following me, I want you with me,’ said Flora, raising her viola.

  Adonis tried very hard, but the orchestra were all over the place. The genial professor sighed. He was going to have his work cut out with this lot.

  That soloist is smart, thought Abby wistfully. Adonis was now going much too fast, but she always caught up.

  Glancing sideways, she noticed the boy with the baseball cap. Totally still, really listening, he followed every note Flora played. What a beauty, thought Abby, he’s the one who ought to be called Adonis.

  A punch-up was narrowly avoided because Adonis skipped another page and missed out the hunky trombonist’s last entry yet again.

  Abby, who’d been studying the concerto for the last fortnight, couldn’t bear to hear it so butchered. But would she do any better? The notes of the score swum meaninglessly before her eyes. Oh God, she hoped she wasn’t going to be sick again.

  Adonis was followed by Lorenzo, a handsome Italian who made beautiful gestures, but who seemed more interested in ogling Flora and the video cameras.

  ‘This one’s got two left hands,’ murmured the professor as Lorenzo kept smoothing his hair with his right hand.

  ‘You’ve occasionally got to beat in time, Lorenzo,’ he called out. ‘No matter how emotional you feel, you’ve got to first and foremost be a traffic policeman so the orchestra can follow and know where they are, particularly in a piece with so many changes of tempo.’

  ‘I try again.’

  This time extravagant waving and fists clenched to heaven were followed by four bars of total silence.

  ‘Where am I?’ Lorenzo smote his noble brow.

  ‘In the Duke’s Hall,’ giggled Flora.

  ‘You’re lost,’ said the professor.

  ‘But not forgotten.’ Parking her chewing-gum on the side of the rostrum, Flora gave Lorenzo a kiss.

  ‘That is a disgusting habit, Flora,’ reproved the professor.

  ‘I don’t know what score you studied, Lorenzo, but I don’t think it was Bartók’s Viola Concerto.’

  The orchestra grinned. Lorenzo turned scarlet, and started to argue.

  ‘Discuss it with me later,’ said the professor firmly. ‘We’ve got time for one more before lunch.’

  The rest of the conductors, waiting behind the horns, leapt to their feet like MPs frantic to speak, but the professor had nodded to the back of the hall.

  ‘Here comes Abby,’ said Flora, sliding off the leader’s knee.

  The Japanese boy looked round.

  ‘That is not her.’

  ‘Bet you a tenner.’

  ‘I don’t have your kind of money.’

  Few of the audience or musicians recognized Abby. She was so thin and wore black jeans, a Black-Watch tartan shirt, dark glasses and no make-up. Her hair was short and curly like the young Paganini. The scarlet pouting lips, the clinging minis, the wild gypsy voluptuousness had all gone.

  ‘Car-worker rather than Carmen,’ murmured Flora.

  Abby gave nobody any time to give her a cheer. She carried no score, only a baton, as she loped up the hall and jumped up onto the rostrum. As she whipped off her glasses, the orchestra could see the imperiousness in those strange, unblinking yellow eyes, which was belied by the white knuckles and the frantically knocking knees. For a second she was grabbed by utter panic, her mind a snowstorm. How could she have been so stupid as to conduct without a score?

  Then she said quietly; ‘This is a beautiful piece, let’s give it some shape and feeling.’

  She suggested some small alterations to the strings and woodwind, then turned to the brass and the percussion. ‘I’m afraid you guys don’t have much to do, which makes it easier to goof off. I’ll try and make things as clear as possible for you. Good luck.’

  Her hand, as she raised it, was shaking so crazily even Bartók couldn’t have captured the cross-rhythms, but once she brought it down the entire hall realized who she was, because she was in a class of her own.

  The beat of her right hand was knife-edge clear and, although her left hand was a little stiff, she still couldn’t splay her fingers or cup her hand, she managed to show the orchestra exactly what she wanted and in addition convey the emotional intensity she needed. The one vestige of the old Abby was the way she swayed to the music like a dancer.

  But she had only to glare at the brass to shut them up and she completely enslaved the trombones by bringing them in exactly right and giving them a radiant smile of approval afterwards.

  Flora found it nerve-racking having the world’s greatest violinist beside her, but she loved the way Abby glanced round to synchronize orchestra and soloist, and swept aside the orchestral sound so Flora could always be heard.

  Are these the same musicians? Is this the same piece? thought the professor in rapture, letting Abby run through the entire movement without stopping, and then leading a whooping, cheering, stamping round of applause.

  ‘You have all the marks of a great conductor,’ he told Abby. ‘You have nerve but not nerves. It will be a joy to teach you.’

  Everyone was longing to congratulate her, but they were too shy and so was she, so they all left her and scampered off to lunch.

  Abby was just pulling out her music case from underneath her chair to put away her stick when she heard a voice say: ‘Excuse me.’

  Swinging round, Abby found the soloist and the boy who had been sitting at the end of her row. Standing up he was at least two inches taller than Abby, and when he whipped off his baseball cap, he revealed a beautifully shaped, freckled forehead and hair an even darker red than the girl’s. Abby wondered if they were brother and sister. The girl did the talking.

  ‘I know it sounds corny, but we’ve got every one of your records. That was a fantastic performance. We wondered if we could buy you lunch, just to celebrate.’

  Abby longed to accept but she was so near the edge, that she snapped back: ‘I’m far too busy to waste time eating.’ And then stalked out.

  Five minutes later, Flora tracked her down in a distant practice room, trying not to be overheard by the pianist bashing out Liszt’s Dante Sonata next door. Abby was huddled against the blue velvet curtains, her shoulders shaking.

  Flora had long been haunted by a description of a vivisection clinic where the animals had their vocal chords cut on admission so, however bad the pain became, all you could hear was desperate rasping. This was the sound Abby was making now.

  ‘
You were seriously good,’ stammered Flora. ‘In fact the only thing to cry about is how awful we were. Mind you, you were lucky to find somewhere to cry, practice rooms are harder to get here than tickets for your old concerts.’

  Looking up, Abby saw the kindness in the girl’s eyes belying her flip manner.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she croaked. ‘The last time I was on a platform I was playing the Brahms concerto with the CBSO.’

  ‘I know,’ said Flora. ‘Everyone knows everything about you. Although what a brilliant conductor you’d turned into was certainly hidden in the mists of Lake Lucerne.’

  ‘It was your solo,’ gulped Abby, fishing for another tissue.

  ‘I can quite understand that.’

  ‘No, you play real good. You’ve got a fantastically natural sound, I guess you reminded me of myself.’

  ‘I should do,’ admitted Flora, ‘having based my style entirely on yours. All our generation has, music schools are churning out more little Abbies than an ecclesiastical property developer!’

  Abby’s lips twitched.

  ‘At least come and have a drink.’

  Outside in the sunshine the boy was leaning against the railings, his nose in the selected piano works of Chopin, making notes with a pencil.

  ‘My name’s Flora Seymour, by the way,’ announced the girl. ‘And this is Marcus Campbell-Black.’

  Abby perked up. ‘You must be Rupert’s son.’

  Marcus waited, never knowing if the next bit was going to hurt or not.

  ‘Goodness, you’re like him,’ Abby admired the long, dark, curling eyelashes and the exquisite bone structure. ‘It’s just like looking at a fabric sample in a different colour.’ Except Abby couldn’t ever imagine Rupert blushing or being lost for words.