by Jilly Cooper
George choked on his glass of wine. Gwynneth turned greedily to the menu. As Megagram and the RSO were splitting the bill, she and Goaty Gilbert, who had granny specs and green teeth, surrounded by a straggly ginger beard, chose all the most expensive things on the menu.
‘Disgusting pigs,’ muttered Flora, receiving another glare from George. But nothing could dim her happiness. In the pocket of her Black-Watch-tartan dungarees was a postcard left in her pigeon hole:
Darling Flora,
Astrid is moving out, thank God. The pillow talk was very limited. Will you have a drink with me the second I get back from Glasgow?
All love,
Viking.
Viking was another alley cat, reflected Flora, but she felt he was the only person who could get her over Rannaldini. For the moment, she could practise on Jack.
‘D’you know Fatima Singh, Mr Hungerford?’ Across the table Gwynneth was returning the attack.
‘Does she?’ asked Flora.
‘What?’ said Gwynneth impatiently.
‘Sing?’ giggled Flora.
‘No, no, she composes. You must be familiar with her Elegy for oppressed Lesbians in the Harem.’
‘Best place for them,’ said Jack. ‘All girls togewer.’
‘She makes lovely use of the sitar,’ went on Gwynneth, totally ignoring them. ‘Gilbert and I note you have no Asian music in your repertoire, Mr Hungerford.’
Down the table, Boris was gazing into Astrid’s eyes and murmuring Pushkin in his deep husky voice. Abby, on an après-concert high, was bending Gilbert’s dirty ear about the wonders of Winifred Trapp and Fanny Mendelssohn.
‘We have a terrific harpist, Miss Parrott, who’s mad about the Trapp solos.’
The Pellafacinis were talking about children with Serena Westwood.
‘I’m not an achiever,’ Luisa was saying apologetically. ‘I look after Julian and the kids.’
Abandoning George for a second, Gwynneth was now discussing madrigals with Miles.
‘The musicians sing them on the coach on the way to concerts,’ he was saying.
‘How joyful,’ Gwynneth brought her hands together with a clash of bangles. ‘When I come down on my three-day assessment of the orchestra, I hope I may be permitted to join in. We could sing motets as well — they are the religious equivalent of the domestic madrigal.’ And she went off into a flurry offa, la, las, in a quavering soprano.
If she got locked into the coffin-shaped lavatory with Viking, decided Flora, there wouldn’t be room for Hilary and Militant Moll as well.
Marcus sat in a daze, his fingers playing idly on the white table cloth, still coming down after the Requiem, unable to say a word on the noisy journey to the hotel, when everyone else was going beserk expressing their approval.
Suddenly he turned to Boris and blurted out: ‘That was one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard, like discovering America or walking round Chartres Cathedral for the first time.’
There was a pause as everyone suddenly remembered the Requiem was why they were there.
Serena Westwood, who believed that a bonk a day kept the doldrums away, and who had high hopes of George, turned and looked at Marcus for the first time. What a beauty, such a sweet, sensitive yet strong face, and he was the only man she’d met whom the Hugh Grant hairstyle really suited.
‘Marcus is why Requiem happen,’ said Boris excitedly. ‘Ee copy, ee transcribe, ee listen, ee encourage, is super pianist, you must give him a contract,’ he added to Serena. ‘Let’s all dreenk to Marcus.’ Having drained his glass, he smashed it in the fireplace.
The other diners looked wildly excited. The waiters came running in in alarm, until George waved to them to forget it and to bring Boris another glass.
‘What have you done recently?’ Serena asked a desperately blushing Marcus.
‘T-teaching mostly. I had a recital in Bradford last week.’
‘Good?’
‘Not brilliant, a string broke in the middle of Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro. It sounded like a bomb going off, all the audience tore out, not many of them bothered to come back.’ Marcus smiled deprecatingly.
‘You must send me a tape,’ said Serena enthusiastically. ‘Perhaps you should have a crack at a piano competition. It’s good experience and the best way of getting known.’
‘It’s a lousy idea,’ snapped Abby, abandoning Gilbert in mid-flow. ‘Marcus doesn’t need gladiatorial contests. He’s gotta develop at his own pace.’
Marcus opened his mouth and shut it again
‘Well, at least get an agent,’ urged Serena. ‘I could suggest-’
‘If he needs an agent,’ snapped Abby, ‘he can go to Howie Denston.’
‘Oh Abby,’ sighed Flora, ‘when will you learn not to be a bitch in the manger?’
‘Thank you.’ Gwynneth’s small mouth was watering like a waste pipe as a great vat of caviar was placed in front of her. ‘Did you mention Bradford?’ she called out to Marcus.
Marcus nodded, mortified still to be the centre of attention.
‘Did you have time to visit the Early Music Shop?’ asked Gwynneth. ‘What a pity, Gilbert brought a portative organ set from there and made it up for my birthday. He’s thinking of tackling a crumhorn or even timbrels next.’
‘What wild ecstasy,’ murmured Flora, contemplating a black, shiny mountain of mussels and wondering how hungry she felt.
‘Did you listen to the CCO at the proms?’ asked Gilbert, forking up lobster at great speed. ‘There is no doubt, they are the best orchestra in the South of England and played as such.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ called Flora down the table. ‘We can play just as well as the CCO. Ow, ow, ow.’ She glanced reproachfully at George. ‘Why d’you kick me like that? Just as well, particularly now we’ve got Julian.’
‘Zat is true,’ Boris dragged his eyes away from Astrid. ‘Zank you for your support, Julian, and welcome to England. Let us drink to Julian.’ Another glass smashed in the fireplace.
Flora turned giggling to Jack, who had demolished his smoked salmon in a trice, and was now helping himself to her mussels.
‘We’ve had Boris living with us on and off for the last two months. He’s exactly like a two year old, smashing everything and getting his words muddled up.’
Boris grinned down the table at them.
‘Always Flora take the puss out of me, but she is good friend who help me. To Flora!’ Crash went a third glass.
‘Cheaper to hire them by the two dozen,’ suggested Julian.
But Gwynneth had put on a soppy, artists-will-be-artists smile. ‘And what is your next opus, Mr Levitsky?’
‘He’s going to write a moonlighting sonata for Viking,’ announced Flora.
Gwynneth raised a reproving hand with another crash of bangles. ‘I asked Mr Levitsky.’
‘I’m going to write opera of King Lear.’
‘That could be very fine,’ mused Gwynneth. ‘Good women’s roles, and you could make an important statement about paternal oppression.’
‘Oh get real,’ muttered Flora.
‘Will you use a Russian translation or tackle iambic pentameter?’ asked Gilbert earnestly.
‘Dactyl and Sponsor,’ grinned Flora, raising her glass to Jack Rodway, who promptly put his arm round her shoulders.
‘I ’ave to say, George, I’ll only sponsor concerts in the future if I can have Flora sitting next to me afterwards.’
‘George ordered me to be nice to you,’ said Flora. ‘And it hasn’t been difficult at all,’ she added, kissing Jack on the cheek.
George was clearly hopping, but, trapped by the need to behave well in front of Gwynneth, he was powerless.
‘You’ve no idea the fun I’ve had playing on Gilbert’s small organ,’ she was now telling him. ‘Of course today’s musicians need an organ that will fit into an estate car or in Gilbert’s case to fold up in a briefcase. Were you aware, Mr Hungerford, that small organs were neither usual nor common until
recent times?’
‘I’ve always said they had more fun in the Middle Ages,’ interrupted Flora. ’Ow, ow, why d’you keep kicking me?’
‘Just shut up,’ whispered George with a flash of clenched teeth.
Finishing up the juice under her moules, Flora missed her mouth with the spoon and realized how drunk she was. She looked at George through her eyelashes. Why did they all think he was so attractive? He almost had a treble chin from so many sponsors’ dinners, and the big horn-rimmed spectacles emphasized the tired, belligerent eyes. He also had the restlessness of the emotionally involved elsewhere. For such a macho man, it must have been a terrible blow when his wife walked out.
Gwynneth was obviously thinking along the same lines. ‘D’you have a partner, Mr Hungerford?’
‘I’m separated,’ said George curtly. ‘Did you both try relationship counselling?’
‘I don’t hold with that sort of thing.’ George was fed up with being nice to her.
‘Don’t be so on the defensive,’ teased Gwynneth. ‘Even Gilbert and I are counselled every six months, a sort of spiritual MOT.’
Her mouth was watering again as a waiter flambéed her tournedos au foie gras on a side-table.
‘I am not a meat-eater normally, but “when in Rome”,’ Gwynneth smiled round as if she were making a colossal concession.
‘My mother went to a marriage-guidance counsellor,’ said Flora. ‘She said they were useless and had more problems than she did.’
Gwynneth ignored Flora, but persisted with George. ‘You want to get in touch with your feelings.’
Flora decided George needed rescuing. She must be drunk.
‘What I’d like to ask,’ she said to Gwynneth, ‘is why the London Met — yes, I read it in The Times — are allowed to push off for three months every summer, so their hall can be used for jazz, pop concerts, gospel, cajun music and other relative garbage, and you pay them a massive thirteen million a year, which is more than the RSO grant for the next forty years. Meanwhile we play all the year round except for a month in the summer. We travel fifty thousand miles in coaches, providing music for nine counties and we pay more back to the Government in VAT than you give us in rotten subsidy. So actually we’re a net earner.’
‘That’s enoof, Flora,’ said George who entirely agreed with her, but couldn’t be seen to support her in public.
‘I cannot reveal the reasons we give subsidies to other institutions,’ said Gwynneth primly.
‘Why not?’ demanded Flora. ‘You receive government money, therefore the public (and that’s me) has the right to know. Everyone needs rises down here.’
‘Hear, hear,’ agreed Jack, ignoring a glare from George and filling Flora’s glass. ‘Too much bloody fudgin’.’
Gwynneth’s little brown eyes were suddenly as dead and opaque as sheeps’ droppings, her furious face twitching.
‘I adore that top, Gwynnie,’ said Miles hastily. ‘You look marvellous in indigo.’
‘It comes from a planet-friendly range,’ said Gwynneth, looking most unfriendly towards Flora. ‘Even the buttons are biodegradable. I’ll give you their card for your partner.’
Marcus could feel Serena’s ankle rubbing against his leg like Scriabin, making him incapable of eating his Dover sole. He’d given eight piano lessons earlier in the day, he ought to practise for a couple of hours when he got home, but he’d do anything for a fat record contract, and Serena looked rather like Grace Kelly in High Society.
Across the table, Abby and Julian had hardly touched their food.
‘It was a wonderful concert,’ Julian was saying.
‘I’m really looking forward to conducting Winifred Trapp next week,’ said Abby.
‘Must have a slash,’ said Jack getting up.
‘As long as no-one slashes our grant any more,’ Flora shouted after him.
Relieved to see that Gwynneth was still nose to nose with Miles, George looked across at Flora.
‘Pleased with Julian?’
‘Oh yes,’ sighed Flora, ‘he’s given us such confidence, and he’s so approachable after Lionel. No problem’s too small for him, not even Gilbert’s organ.’
George shook his head. ‘You’re a minx.’
‘I’m a cunning little vixen.’
‘Your doggy bags, Mr Hungerford,’ the waiter put two foil-wrapped packets beside George’s plate.
‘You’ve got dogs?’ said Flora in surprise.
‘Three Rottweilers.’
‘Four, counting you,’ said Flora. ‘I like Rottweilers,’ she added, remembering wistfully how she used to romp with Rannaldini’s.
‘You haven’t eaten much,’ George glanced up at the pudding trolley rumbling towards them. ‘You better have an ice, kids like ices.’
Flora shook her head, her red hair splaying out like a marigold. ‘No, no, I don’t like anything that gets in touch with my fillings.’
Then George did smile, lifting his heavy face like a sudden shaft of sunlight on a limestone cliff.
‘Everyone’s having a ball,’ said Flora. ‘Thank you — it’s been a terrific evening.’
But she had reckoned without Gwynneth, whose ethnic crimson skirt was about to pop, and thick pepper-and-salt hair about to escape from its bun, as she washed down her final mouthful of tournedos au foie gras, with her fourth glass of Pouilly-Fumé.
‘You are driving, Gilbert.’
Gilbert looked livid, but his mouth was too crammed with monkfish to refuse.
Gwynneth then turned her shiny off-white face to George.
‘Isn’t it bizarre the way you hear a name for the first time and then hear it again and again. Miles has just mentioned Winifred Trapp. Did you know that Rannaldini has just recorded all Winifred Trapp’s Harp Concertos with American Bravo?’
There was a stunned, horrified pause.
‘Lovely shimmering music,’ went on Gwynneth, delighted at the consternation she had caused. ‘An advance copy arrived on my desk this morning. Although Rannaldini, or rather Sir Roberto, tells me he recorded it in Prague very cheaply, the quality is superb. I thought he’d lost his fire, after his last wife left him, but his new partner has regenerated him.’
Watching the colour drain out of Flora’s flushed, happy face, Miles wondered if she’d had anything to do with passing on the information.
‘Of course Rannaldini’s always been innovative,’ went on Gwynneth smugly. ‘And what is more, he and Dame Hermione have just recorded all Fanny Mendelssohn’s songs with Winifrid Trapp’s orchestration. Quite marvellous, don’t you agree, Gilbert?’
‘Indeed,’ said Gilbert, who was trying to scrape hollandaise sauce out of his straggly ginger beard. ‘I think if Fanny and Felix had lived, she would have been the more significant composer, although I agree with the Mendelssohn Society that had Felix lived he would have been greater than Richard Wagner.’
George’s face was limestone again.
‘When did Rannaldini record this?’ he asked bleakly.
‘In September,’ said Gwynneth, who was now leering at the pudding trolley. ‘That gateau does look tasty. They get these things out so quickly these days, but Rannaldini’ll want to give Winifred, it’s pronounced Vinifred actually, a real push, so I doubt if they’ll release it before January or February. Such a slap in the face for folk who say there are no great women composers.’
‘I knew nothing about this,’ said Julian, appalled.
‘Nor did I,’ said Serena Westwood grimly. American Bravo were Megagram’s biggest rivals.
Abby was frantically trying to work out how Rannaldini could have pre-empted her. The brochures, already late because of so many changes, had only been sent out in September. Who else could have told him — Hugo? Lionel? Perhaps unthinkingly Marcus could have said something to Helen. She’d heard Rannaldini was enraged that the RSO had snapped Julian up, but that wouldn’t have given him enough time. Either way she’d been left with Egmont on her face.
THIRTY-EIGHT
; As a result of Gwynneth’s revelations, Megagram pulled the plug on Abby. Serena Westwood had been singularly uncharmed by her peremptory behaviour throughout dinner and she and Megagram had no desire to record obscure repertoire they had been led to believe was exclusive, in competition with the mighty Rannaldini and Harefield.
George and Miles were equally uncharmed to be lumbered with a Fanny Mendelssohn and Winifred Trapp series with no recordings to back it up. Viking’s new nickname, ‘Poverty Trapp’, proved to be prophetic. At the first concert, there were more people on the platform than in the audience.
Having worked flat out in September and October, Abby was due for a break in November, and flew to America to see her mother. She spent most of the vacation locked in her bedroom familiarizing herself with the remaining Trapp-Mendelssohn repertoire and Rachel’s Requiem (which was now being recorded in December) — anything to avoid her mother’s constant moaning that Abby would never get off the shelf and provide her with grandchildren.
‘There must be some guy in your life, Abigail.’
For a second Abby’s thoughts flickered towards Viking, then sadly she admitted there was no-one.
November had been so mild, that as she was driven back from the airport, she noticed palest green hazel catkins already blending with the amber leaves still hanging from willow and blackthorn. It was a beautiful day. Reaching the H.P. Hall in the lunch-hour, she found Viking asleep under a horse-chestnut tree. He’d probably been up all night, moonlighting. Like some Victorian personification of autumn, his gold hair was spread out on the bleached grass, and his slumped yet still graceful body was almost entirely covered in kiteshaped orange leaves.
Happy days for him, thought Abby wistfully. Seeing an unusually angelic smile on his face, she was about to wake him. Then she noticed a piece of cardboard, cut in the shape of a tombstone, propped against his feet. On it someone had written:
Here lies Viking,
Very much to all our liking,
Who fucked himself to death.
With a howl of misery, Abby turned and ran inside.
Her mood was not improved when she learnt that George had axed the last two Trapp-Mendelssohn concerts and replaced them with lollipops, and that Megagram were now having cold feet about putting up the money for Rachel’s Requiem. This would be catastrophic for Boris, who had already spent all the advance.