by Jilly Cooper
‘Rupert came to see me in the hospital and gave me this.’ Delving in her jeans pocket Abby produced the silver clove of garlic. ‘To ward off evil. Do tell him I take it everywhere and give him my best.’
‘He said he’d met you,’ said Marcus guardedly.
Round the corner he opened the door of his Aston Martin for her.
‘You go in the back,’ said Flora, ‘then you’ll have room for your legs.’
‘Georgie Maguire: New Man.’ Abby picked up a tape on the back seat in excitement. ‘This must be her latest. Oh wow! Christopher, my ex and I, “Rock Star” was our sort of big tune. I know it’s terrible shmaltz and I shouldn’t say so, but I just adore Georgie’s music.’
‘You should,’ said Marcus, starting up the car and ignoring Flora’s kick on the ankle. ‘Georgie’s Flora’s mother.’
‘Omigod!’
‘I’ll tell her you’re a fan,’ said Flora. ‘She’ll be really pleased, she’s a terrific fan of yours.’
Abby looked at Flora with new respect.
‘Gee, I’m sorry I was rude earlier.’
Flora shrugged. ‘Mum’s the same. She can’t bear strangers muscling in, particularly when she’s coming down after a concert. And she goes ballistic if people drop in at home.’
Abby noticed Marcus wheezing as he drove. Petrol fumes were floating on the hot air and the walk to the car had made him breathless. Reaching into the pocket of his shirt he got out his inhaler and squirted a couple of jets into the back of his throat.
‘Marcus is asthmatic,’ explained Flora. ‘Thank God we can forget about that for a bit.’ Pulling the Bartók concerto out of the stereo she threw it in the glove compartment.
‘Put it back in its case,’ grumbled Marcus. ‘And if you must smoke, don’t use the floor as an asthtray.’
Flora grinned. ‘Don’t be a fusspot.’ Then, turning round to Abby, continued, ‘I can’t get over how different you look.’
‘I cut my hair and my losses. Which did you think was the worst of those conductors?’
‘Adonis by a very swollen head,’ announced Flora.
‘I can’t think how you followed him,’ said Marcus.
‘If you learn to follow any idiot, you get more dates later,’ Flora added scornfully. ‘Conductors are so thick. They carry a white stick to tell everyone they’re deaf. Marcus has been wonderful,’ she added to Abby. ‘He’s been playing the piano version for me all week.’ Leaning across him, she chucked some more chewing-gum out of the window which landed on the shiny dark green flanks of the Bentley drawing up beside them.
‘Jesus, when will you learn to behave?’ Marcus accelerated away from the Bentley’s fist-shaking chauffeur. ‘I thought Lorenzo was even more of a talent-free zone than Adonis. He’s got no sense of rhythm.’
‘He has in bed,’ said Flora. ‘Look at that sweet Jack Russell. I wish I could have a dog in London.’
‘When did you go to bed with Lorenzo?’ asked Marcus in surprise.
‘Oh last week, some time. He keeps wanting repeats. I quite fancy Toniko, I’ve never had a Jap.’
‘Where did you two meet?’ asked Abby, wondering what on earth the relationship was between them.
‘We were at school together,’ said Flora.
Marcus and Flora were the star pupils at the Academy. Marcus was a great beauty. He had inherited Rupert’s Greek profile (so vital in a pianist) and his elegant long-legged, broad-shouldered body. But he also had his mother’s glossy dark red hair, freckles and huge startled eyes, which were the same soft acid green as spring moss. Desperately shy, he was, however, unaware of his miraculous looks and, like a fawn or faun, seemed likely to bolt into mythical woods at any moment. In his third year at the Academy, he was destined for a brilliant career as a pianist if he could conquer his asthma and his nerves.
Flora, who was only in her second year, and who was as sexy and self-confident as Marcus was shy and retiring, had a voice even more beautiful than her mother Georgie. She was still taking singing lessons but, despite pressure from her teachers, who liked to feature illustrious ex-pupils in the prospectus, she showed no interest in taking up singing as a career. Instead she was concentrating on the viola.
Her official excuse was that she didn’t want to be tagged as Georgie Maguire’s daughter.
‘I don’t have Mum’s charisma, nor her ability to project.’
In reality she had been totally wiped out by an affaire with Rannaldini when she was sixteen, and had decided singing was too isolated a career. She had deliberately chosen the viola, that lovely but unobtrusive Cinderella of the instruments, because it blended into the orchestral sound like cornflour, was seldom heard on its own and was the butt of endless jokes.
In doing this Flora felt she was putting on a mental hair shirt, submerging her flamboyant personality, in the hope that God would forgive her the affaire with Rannaldini and somehow alleviate her suffering.
With their famous parents and their hefty private incomes, Marcus and Flora, in the current economic climate of vanishing grants, could have been the victims of a lot of envy and flak at college. As they were both exceptionally talented, utterly without side, and it was soon realized that Marcus’s apparent aloofness was only shyness, any prejudice had swiftly evaporated.
TEN
The quick drink turned into a three-hour session. All the tables outside Marcus’s and Flora’s favourite Italian restaurant were taken, so they lunched inside demanding a large carafe of red wine prestissimo, and larding the rest of their order for canelloni and ratatouille with musical terminology, which involved a lot of back-chat and giggling with the waiters.
Despite their age differences, Abby was nearly twenty-eight, Flora nineteen, Marcus twenty, they found they had a huge amount in common. As children of the famous, Marcus and Flora understood the pressures and the sacrifices.
‘One is never centre stage,’ sighed Flora. Like Abby, both Rupert and Georgie had toured extensively and Marcus told Abby how wretched Rupert had been after he gave up show jumping.
A lot of lunch was spent telling Abby how brilliantly she had conducted. Always boastful when she was unsure of new people, with her tongue loosened by unaccustomed drinking on a very empty stomach, she went into an orgy of name-dropping about the famous musicians who had, it seemed, either tried to screw her or screw up her career. Inevitably she eventually launched into a tirade against Rannaldini.
Flora let her run and, although she had downed most of a carafe of red by the time Abby had finished, no flush had invaded her pale cheeks.
‘Did you sleep with Rannaldini?’ she asked idly.
‘Certainly not,’ said Abby pompously. ‘He came between me and my art.’
Flora kneaded her bread into a pellet and lobbed it at the restaurant cat.
‘When I knew him he came between my legs. Whoops, sorry.’ Then, at Abby’s look of incredulity, continued: ‘I had an affaire with him when I was still at school.’
‘You gotta be joking. What happened?’
‘He dumped me, left me behind like an indifferent paperback in the folds of a hotel bed.’ Flora waved to the waiter to bring another carafe.
‘How long did it last?’
‘It’s a long, long time from May to September,’ sighed Flora. ‘Rannaldini’s so promiscuous, that being hopelessly, hopelessly hooked on him has all the exclusivity of a widow in the First World War, but it doesn’t seem to hurt any less; no safety in numbers.’ Her voice was getting faster and faster. ‘It’s like being alive in your coffin, but no-one hears you scrabbling to get out. I know he’s a shit, but not an hour passes when I don’t want him.’
She dropped her head like a broken daffodil, then the next moment had stubbed out her cigarette on Marcus’s untouched ratatouille.
‘Oh Christ, Markie, I’m sorry.’ Her head fell sideways onto his shoulder. As he put up a freckled right hand to stroke her cheek, she clutched it.
‘Heard the latest viola joke?’ said Marcus to c
heer her up.
‘What?’
‘What d’you do with a dead viola player?’
‘What?’
‘Move him up a desk.’
Flora’s mouth lifted slightly.
Marcus had eaten, drunk and talked much less than the others. Occasionally his eyes met Abby’s and a shy, helpless smile drifted across his face. He was beautifully dressed in chinos, a dark brown cashmere sweater and a Prussian-blue shirt, which went perfectly with his dark red hair. When he removed his sweater Abby noticed he had a pianist’s physique: breadth of shoulder, arms grooved with muscle, and big hands that could stretch a tenth with ease. A gold signet ring bearing the Campbell-Black crest flashed on his left hand, as he practised on the table snatches of Chopin’s Grande Polonaise which he had to play in a college recital next week.
He’s very appealing, thought Abby, through a haze of wine. Perhaps I need a toyboy, particularly one who could simplify difficult repertoire by transcribing it for the piano. He also picked up the check.
‘I’ll pay you next week, it’s the end of the month,’ Flora called out as Marcus went over to the till. ‘I think I bought the whole of Jigsaw and HMV yesterday morning. Leave it,’ she said as Abby got out her purse, ‘Marcus gets a massive allowance from Rupert.’
‘How did you two meet?’
‘As I said we were at school together. I’d been drinking at lunchtime, comme toujours. I felt sick during a concert and threw up into Marcus’s trumpet. I think that was the moment Rannaldini fell, albeit temporarily, in love with me.’
Out of the window, a horse-chestnut tree, tawny against the palest blue sky, reminded Flora of the same great bell-like trees in Rannaldini’s park.
‘How was he really?’ she asked as she emptied Marcus’s untouched second glass of wine into her own.
‘Being upstaged by Marcus’s father. Rupert had flown out to sign me up for Declan O’Hara’s programme.’ Again Abby couldn’t resist boasting. ‘Rupert came on really strong; if I hadn’t been crazy about Christopher, we’d certainly have ended up in bed.’
‘I wouldn’t tell Marcus that,’ interrupted Flora sharply. ‘He’s bats about his stepmother.’
Abby jumped slightly as Marcus chucked three gold pound coins onto the red-and-white checked tablecloth. As he put a fiver alongside the pile of notes in his wallet, Abby saw a photograph of a very beautiful redhead.
‘Is that your partner?’ she asked archly. ‘D’you go for redheads?’
‘No, it’s my mother,’ said Marcus.
As it was four o’clock there was no point in going back to the Academy so, after Flora had rushed back to fetch her viola, which she’d left under the table, they tottered down the road to Madame Tussauds because Abby had never seen her own waxwork.
‘I went to see it as a pilgrimage my first day at college,’ confided Flora.
On the top floor, they discovered Rupert’s waxwork in red coat, breeches and brown topped boots, gazing moodily into space among the great sporting heroes.
‘Hi, Dad,’ said Marcus.
Ironically Rupert was next to Jake Lovell who was looking equally unfriendly.
‘Isn’t that the guy?’ asked Abby perplexed.
‘Who ran off with Marcus’s mother,’ said Flora, ‘who we don’t talk about in Rupert’s presence. I’m amazed they don’t come alive at night and throttle each other. Hi, Mum.’
There was Georgie Maguire with her long russet hair and sensual smiling face, clutching a microphone among the pop stars. Drifting into Classical Music, they ran slap into Hermione, mouth wide open in song.
‘Queen of the nightmare,’ stormed Flora, ‘ought to be in the chamberpot of horrors.’
Abby liked Flora more and more, particularly when she removed her chewing-gum and stuck it on Hermione’s nose and topped her dark curls with Marcus’s baseball cap.
‘Flor-ah,’ hissed Marcus, retrieving his baseball cap and looking nervously at an ancient dozing assistant.
‘Hope to God she doesn’t come to life like Hermione’s statue in The Winter’s Tale.’ Getting out a Pentel, Flora drew a big black moustache on Hermione’s upper lip.
Abby was clutching her sides and Flora was lighting an illicit cigarette. Then the temperature plummeted as though they had just stepped out of a plane in the Arctic Circle, and they found themselves confronting a fearsome, lifelike Rannaldini, brandishing his baton like a dirk. Everything was in place, the gardenia, the trained grey hair, the three inches of dazzling white cuff.
‘Waving his wand like the wicked fairy,’ said Flora stonily, ‘Good afternoon, Maestro.’ Drawing heavily on her cigarette, she shoved it between Rannaldini’s fingers.
‘If I was wearing a pin, we could stick it into him,’ said Abby.
By now their giggling had roused the attendant. Marcus hastily distracted him by asking where they could find Abigail Rosen’s waxwork. He’s got a beautiful voice, thought Abby, a bit like Prince Charles’s but with a slight break in it.
The attendant hadn’t recognized Abby and, after much head-scratching and consulting of lists, announced that her waxwork had been melted down because she wasn’t considered famous enough any more.
‘I flew too near the sun,’ said Abby tonelessly.
Once they got outside, she crumpled against Marcus.
‘I guess I’m an applause-junkie worse than Hermione,’ she sobbed into his shoulder. ‘I grumbled about the pressures at the time, OK? I complained endlessly about media intrusion, but I just can’t get used to not being famous any more, no fan mail, never being in the paper, not even the classical music press, and now this.’
The rush-hour traffic, crawling towards the Westway where a huge setting sun blazed like a stop sign, looked on fascinated. A trio of workmen crammed into the front of a blue van, seeing Abby so tall, slim and wide-shouldered in Marcus’s arms; lent out and shouted: ‘Fucking poofters.’
‘Fucking homophobes,’ shouted back Flora, making a V-sign.
‘It’s only because your agents have deliberately kept you out of the public eye,’ she comforted Abby. ‘Look how deliriously excited everyone was today. Once the Press twig you’re the new Karajan, they’ll never leave you alone.’
‘And that’s as bad a nightmare,’ wailed Abby. ‘And I miss my Strad. It’s now being played by a bitch called Maria Kusak. I know she won’t look after it.’
‘I expect she’ll leave it in restaurants like I do,’ said Flora, as they rustled through plane leaves unhinged by the day’s great heat. ‘Now we could go to the Planetarium which would put everything in perspective and make us realize how infinitely trivial our lives are, but unfortunately it’s just shut, so we’re going to take you to meet a very glamorous Russian conductor.’
‘All Russian conductors are drunk and incompetent,’ said Abby ungratefully.
‘Boris is often very drunk but he’s a good conductor,’ said Marcus.
‘And a lot of people unaccountably think he’s a terrific composer,’ added Flora, reflecting that it couldn’t have been good for Abby’s ego, that all the people pouring out of offices stared at Marcus rather than at her.
But Abby had stopped in her tracks.
‘Are you talking about Boris Levitsky who married Rachel Grant?’
Flora nodded.
‘That’s weird.’ Abby was really agitated. ‘I read a piece about Rachel’s suicide. It really influenced me, right, that she could drive off a cliff, because she’d caught Boris cheating on her. After I cut my wrist,’ Abby’s voice broke, ‘I wanted to write to Boris and tell him I was sure Rachel didn’t mean to kill herself. It was just a crazy gesture to wipe out the hurt, with an even greater hurt, anything to make the pain go away.’
‘Tell Boris that, I’m sure it would comfort him,’ said Marcus.
‘Boris was very well known in Russia when I was at the Moscow Conservatoire,’ sniffed Abby later, as Marcus edged the Aston Martin through the traffic. ‘We all went to his concerts. It was a great scandal wh
en he fell in love with Rachel and defected to the West. She was a marvellous player.’
‘I wasn’t a fan of hers,’ said Flora with rare coldness. ‘She was an awful bitch. You couldn’t blame Boris for straying. He used to be one of Rannaldini’s assistant conductors, and Rachel so detested the influence Rannaldini had on him that she had an affaire with Rannaldini out of spite. Took him off me to be exact, that’s probably why I hate her.’
‘But I thought Boris and Rachel were reconciled,’ protested Abby.
‘They were,’ said Flora, ‘but Rannaldini and Boris were after the same job, running the New World Symphony Orchestra in New York. Boris looked as though he was going to get it. He was young, brilliant and back with Rachel. The Scorpion caught him coming out of Chloe’s, his ex-mistress’s, flat. I’m sure Rannaldini tipped them off. Typical shitty thing he would do. Rachel saw the photograph in The Scorpion and drove off the road. Hey presto. Rannaldini, crying crocodile tears over the death of the finest pianist of her generation, lands the New York job. Can we get some drink from that off-licence, Marcus?’
‘We can’t stop here.’
‘We’ll have to stop somewhere. Boris’ll have drunk any drink he’s got. Boris was shattered by Rachel’s death,’ Flora turned back to Abby. ‘Particularly because she left him two young children to bring up. Not a great aid to composition. Despite such set-backs, Boris has had loads of women since Rachel died, men get over these things much more quickly than women, because they’re in a buyer’s market, but he still misses Rachel and feels dreadfully guilty about her. People are always giving him money to write things, then he doesn’t deliver. The Rutminster Symphony Orchestra commissioned a requiem to Rachel more than two years ago. An old duck called Sir Rodney Mackintosh-’
‘I’m his protégée,’ said Abby sniffily, ‘I’ve only been stopping at his house for the past two and a half years.’
I can’t be expected to know her entire c.v., thought Flora irritated.
‘Rodney’s so darling,’ added Abby possessively.
‘Darling,’ agreed Flora. ‘So you probably know Rodney felt sorry for Boris, but again Boris has failed to deliver. Every time he picks up his chewed pencil he thinks about Rachel, starts crying and has to have another huge glass of red wine, and the RSO have to keep rescheduling.’