by Jilly Cooper
She took up her position in Concert Hall Approach under Hungerford Bridge in a little paved garden with boxes full of trailing ivy and laurel bushes. At first she tried to put up a stand but the wind blew her music all over the place so she played by ear. Soon concert-goers on their way to the Festival Hall and office workers setting off to lunch were enjoying her exquisite sound, feeling sorry for her playing on such a cold day and chucking coins and even notes into her tin.
It was hard to say thank you when you were playing the viola, so Flora made do with smiles and massive nods. After In the South, an old man asked her if she’d made any records and between ‘The Pink Panther’ and ‘Panis Angelicus’ a blushing couple asked if she’d play at their wedding. Flora said she’d adore to and gave them her telephone number.
Then she nearly dropped her viola in the middle of ‘Where E’er You Walk’ as she saw George Hungerford (perhaps he’d come to admire his bridge) jump out of a taxi and dive into the Archduke Wine Bar opposite. He was probably in London for a meeting of the Association of British Orchestras. She’d be sacked if he saw her. Flora pulled Viking’s cap over her nose. The next moment her bow really did skid all over the strings as a sleek dark blue Mercedes drew up, a black-leather-clad chauffeur jumped out and opened the door for Rannaldini. Hearing such discords, Rannaldini immediately swung round, but Flora had dived behind a concrete pillar. Rannaldini was wearing his black overcoat with the Astrakhan collar and looked as fatally glamorous as ever. Flora wanted to race through the traffic, fall at his feet and plead with him to take her back; she wasn’t cured in the slightest.
In horror, she watched him walk quickly towards the Archduke and the manager fling open the door to welcome him, congratulating him no doubt on being the greatest conductor of the year and of all time.
For a second, a 77 bus blotted out her view. A minute later, through a jungle of glossy dark green plants, Flora could see him and George sitting down at a table on the first floor. Rannaldini was unfolding his napkin and laying it across those iron-hard thighs that had gripped her once with such lust. Now he was picking up the wine list. God, he was wearing a wedding-ring. Helen must have far more influence on him than poor Kitty. Please make him look at me, please make him not, prayed Flora launching into ‘Dido’s Lament’. And what the hell was he doing with George?
Frozen but oblivious to the cold because the pain in her heart was so terrible, she watched George and Rannaldini coming out forty minutes later both looking much more cheerful. They stood talking for half a minute, until Rannaldini’s Merc glided up and whisked them both away.
Flora walked off in deep shock forgetting to take her tin of money. What could they be up to? No good, if Rannaldini had anything to do with it. But the RSO was far too small-fry for him.
It was only when she got back to Rutminster, and passed the newsagent on the platform, that she realized there was no point getting a valentine card for Viking. Then she started to cry.
Viking was utterly angelic.
‘So, you’re not over Rannaldini?’
‘No, no, not at all. I’m so sorry, Viking. It’s like thinking you’ve zapped cancer, then discovering you’re only in remission. You’ve been so lovely to me.’
‘Let me go on being lovely, josst give it time, sweetheart.’ It was the nearest he got to begging.
‘We can’t, not if I’m still in love with Rannaldini. You’re too, well, decent to put up with half-measures.’
‘So young, and so untender’ said Viking bitterly.
‘So young, my lord, and true.’
Just to test Flora’s total immunity, Viking tried another tack. Why didn’t he mix business with pleasure by making a play for Jessica, George’s thick but stunning secretary?
‘Then I can lure her back to The Bordello for long lunches when George is away and you can raid the files and see what the dirty duo are really op to.’
Viking winced when Flora agreed listlessly, but without any display of jealousy, that this would be a very good idea.
‘But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,’ he said sadly, taking Flora’s hand.
He then went out and got drunk. He was far too proud to show it, but he was desperately unhappy for the first time in his life.
Valentine’s Day temporarily distracted the RSO from their gloom. Suddenly red envelopes were nesting like robins in pigeon holes. Still shell-shocked by her sighting of Rannaldini, Flora hardly noticed how many she received. Blue reeled round the band room in ecstasy, because he recognized Cathie’s writing on the envelope sending him a chocolate heart. Militant Moll ordered Ninion to put a valentine message in the Independent and left it lying around. Poor Fat Isobel sent three cards to herself to avoid humiliation. All Cyril’s week’s wages went on two dozen red roses for Miss Priddock. Miles smirked to get an unsigned jokey card from Brittlecombe, the village in which Hilary lived. Noriko was thrilled to have a valentine teddy bear holding a single red rose from Cherub. Dixie and Clare, Randy and Candy, Dimitri and Miss Parrott all went out to individual valentine dinners.
George Hungerford was distracted for ten minutes from the deficit while he opened his cards. All the management’s secretaries (including Miss Priddock, who had to think of John Drummond’s future) and most of the women musicians still harboured hopes of becoming the second Mrs Hungerford. Viking, who got twice as many cards, didn’t bother to open them. Jessica, George’s lovely secretary, however, was overwhelmed at lunch-time to receive a balloon in the shape of a pink heart bearing the words, ‘Hiya sexy’, rising out of two dozen pale pink roses accompanied by a card saying: ‘Love from Viking.’
Earlier in the day Jessica had been feeling a bit low. George had called her a blithering idiot for booking a pianist to play Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto rather than his First, which had been rehearsed by the orchestra — a mistake only discovered on the afternoon of the concert.
Viking reassured her it was the easiest of mistakes. He was so comforting the following day, after Jessica had another bollocking from George for passing ‘Drunks 6 p.m.’, on an invitation when it should have been ‘Drinks’, that she accepted a dinner invitation. During the evening Viking learnt that the confidential files were stored on microfilm in George’s office and handled by George’s London secretary who usually came down one day a week.
Acting dumb, Viking told Jessica he was only bog Irish and had never seen a really sophisticated computer system before. Over a bottle of Moët in Jessica’s office on the second date, he managed to persuade her, since she was so brilliant, to initiate him into its mysteries. Jessica was feeling low that day because George had bawled her out for typing ‘Piggy Porker’ on a place card.
Immensely flattered by Viking’s admiration, Jessica showed him how to find the Index which was called the file menu, how to locate the individual file one wanted and then how to print it out.
‘Of course, I’ve never looked at any of these files,’ she said. ‘They are far too secret, George would sack me.’
At a fleeting glance at the file menu, Viking couldn’t see any reference to Rannaldini, but during a steamy session, after Jessica had drunk seven-eighths of the Moët, he managed to elicit the password ‘Georgetown’ needed to enter the system.
‘But you must promish, promish not to tell anyone,’ whispered the delectable Jessica.
‘Georgetown,’ cried Viking in elation, as he entered her system.
Having stopped himself coming too soon, by studying the photographs of Mel Gibson and kittens and a poster calling for the banning of veal crates, Viking lay back afterwards playing ‘She loves me, she loves me not’, with the chewing-gum parked under Jessica’s desk. It came out: ‘She loves me not.’ Jessica was far prettier and had a far more beautiful body, but Viking was missing Flora so much it killed him. Somehow she had to be freed from Rannaldini’s evil spell.
In late February George went skiing. ‘No doubt to put another million in his Swiss bank account,’ said Flora sourly.
; By coincidence, it was noticed Juno Meadows had taken the same week off. George was due back late Wednesday afternoon. In anticipation Miss Priddock took herself off to the hairdresser in her lunch-hour and Viking lured Jessica back to The Bordello for a long lunch leaving Flora free to raid the files.
Shaking with terror that she would trigger off an alarm or someone would come in, Flora locked herself into George’s office. It was rather like a sweet little village, with all those Perspex models with their balconies, loofah bay trees and Dinky cars outside the front door. Somehow, their cosiness blinded one to the tragedies behind their realization: the terrified old ladies, the threats of knee-capping, the flooded basements, the doors knocked out in the middle of the night.
The only jolly note was John Drummond fatly asleep in George’s out-tray and a bunch of Cyril’s yellow crocuses like a little gold sun on the big desk. Realizing what an ugly customer she was dealing with, Flora quailed. But, after all Viking’s hard work, she must be brave.
Turning on the computer, she was confronted with a screen as blank as Rannaldini’s face until the words ‘Enter Password’ came up. Her hands were trembling so much she had three goes before she managed to type in ‘Georgetown’.
Eureka! There was the main menu. Running hastily down through the files: ‘Office Accounts’, ‘Foreign tours’, ‘Salaries’, she came to the word ‘Private.’
Locating the ‘Private’ file menu she found far more exciting fare. She was tempted to stop and read the private detective’s report on George’s wife’s adultery or the details of various property fiddles: the Cotchester bypass, for example, was scheduled to go slap through Rupert’s estate. Serve him right for being such a sod to Marcus. Even more interesting would be the assessments on members of the RSO. Bloody hell, she couldn’t go through every file. She jumped nervously as John Drummond gave a great snore in his out-tray.
Looking back at the list of files she noted the innocuous words ‘Orchestra South’, scrolled the cursor down the page and double clicked to get into the file. Got it in one! With increasing moans of horror, she realized she had unearthed a fiendish plot to merge the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra with the RSO and form a new Southern Super Orchestra. Rannaldini had always been wildly jealous of Simon Rattle and longed for the same sort of set-up as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera where the musical director had control of a pool of crack musicans who could be called on to play for either company.
As soon as Edith Spink retired later in the year, Rannaldini would take over as musical director of the CCO, Abby’s contract wouldn’t be renewed after March, nor would those of most of the RSO.
‘This is the only way we can hack out the dead wood,’ Rannaldini had written to George. The date was 5 January. Had Hermione introduced George to Rannaldini after Messiah?
Julian would be fired because he had defied Rannaldini in New York. Viking, Blue, Simon, Dimitri and Peter were among the few players who would join the new Super Orchestra. Between them George and Rannaldini would build it back to double strength with virtuoso players in every department. Running her eye down the list Flora saw that surprisingly George had put a question mark beside her name. Then she gave a wail of misery discovering Rannaldini’s next E-mail.
Definitely not, he had written crushingly, Flora is unstable, vindictive and a pernicious influence.
The crumbling H.P. Hall and its surrounding twenty acres were the RSO’s only assets. This was where George came in. He would buy the property for a pittance in a white-knight gesture to get the orchestra out of debt, then lease it back to them. As soon as the orchestra folded he would build a supermarket.
The plot was horribly ingenious. Instead of putting horrid little houses all over Cowslip Hill, which no-one wanted, he would build a festival centre, a megaplex with twenty-four drive-in cinemas, golf-courses, food halls, virtual-reality centres and bouncy castles which would bring employment, tourists, fun and prosperity to Rutminster. In return all he asked was planning permission to knock down the highly dangerous, collapsing Victorian monstrosity, the Herbert Parker Hall and build a supermarket with a new roundabout to hive off traffic. No wonder George had been so reluctant to repair the roof. Cotchester already had a beautiful hall, no distance from Valhalla by helicopter in which the new Super Orchestra would be housed. The only sticking point seemed to be Rannaldini’s insistence on absolute hiring and firing rights.
Flora was about to print out the whole file when she nearly died of heart failure because there was a great hammering on the door.
‘Anyone at home? Come oot, come oot,’ called Dixie’s voice.
‘Priddock must be having a ziz,’ said Randy.
‘Or Jessica a bonk.’
But after a bit more hammering they got bored and wandered off.
Sweat was trickling down Flora’s body. She’d never make a burglar; her hand was shaking so violently she was petrified of pressing the wrong button and wiping all the evidence. But somehow she managed to switch back to the file menu and type in ‘Print’ beside ‘Orchestra South’. Slowly but miraculously fifteen pages rolled out. She had just managed to shove them up her jersey and unlock the door when Jessica staggered in. It would have been hard to decide who looked the more guilty. Jessica’s hair was sopping from the shower. Flora felt sick with misery. Viking had obviously screwed her.
Hearing a thud behind her, she jumped out of her skin but it was only John Drummond crash landing on the carpet, weaving round Jessica’s buckling legs. Flora hoped to God he didn’t speak English.
‘He’s asking for his dinner.’ said Jessica. ‘George is having a black-tie do at home this evening and he wants everything perfect. I’ll have to go out shopping again later, I wasted my entire lunch-hour trying to find scallops. If only there was a Waitrose in Rutminster.’
‘There may be one sooner than you think,’ said Flora grimly as she sidled out.
What the hell was she to do? Viking would have left for London by now to record the Brahms Horn Trio. The only answer, if she were to save Abby and the rest of the orchestra, was to tackle George at once.
Driving down the High Street, she saw a newspaper hoarding: MEGAPLEX FOR COWSLIP HILL.
Screeching to a halt she picked up a paper but it only reported the delighted reaction of councillors and residents.
Alan Cardew, the planning officer, was quoted as saying, ‘This really puts Rutminster on the map.’
It was a bitterly cold evening. After a boiling bath to remove the sweat and a couple of stiff vodkas, Flora slid all over the road as she drove round to George’s splendid house which was situated on the other side of Rutminster as far as possible from both Cowslip Hill and H.P. Hall. George wouldn’t want to spoil his own green hills with megaplexes and supermarkets, thought Flora savagely as her wheel tracks ruined his perfect lawn.
The whole place, she could see, was speedily being wrecked by George’s fearful taste, a man on his own who had no truck with interior designers.
‘Bet he knocked her arms off,’ she muttered, as she passed a huge replica of the Venus de Milo glittering with frost.
The butler told her to hop it. So Flora asked him to tell Mr Hungerford that it was Flora Seymour and he better get rid of his dinner party, because she wanted to talk about Orchestra South.
After two minutes, by which time Flora had practically frozen to the doorstep, she was shown into George’s study.
The room was lit by a large chandelier which the butler promptly dimmed. The autumnal-leaf-patterned carpet was so new, he had great difficulty tugging the door shut over it. Brown leather sofas and armchairs hung about awkwardly, like buffaloes. Repro-Georgian bookshelves on either side of the gas log fire were filled with book-club editions, videos and reference books including Encyclopaedia Britannica by the yard.
One wall was covered by a vast television screen and a stereo, a second by thousands of LPs, tapes and CDs. The third, which faced George’s imposing, incredibly tidy desk, was dominated by a Gree
n Park railing portrait of a beautiful woman with short pale yellow hair and cold hare-bell-blue eyes, whose brilliance was accentuated by the huge sapphires round her neck. She had the disdainful perfection of women behind the beauty counters of big department stores, who want to shame you into spending a fortune on make-up and skin care. This must be Ruth whom George refused to divorce. She didn’t look a bundle of laughs. You could see why George had the hots for Juno. She and Ruth were the same type, ice rather than nice maidens.
Flora’s teeth were rattling like Cherub’s castanets, a glance in the ornate, white gold framed mirror over the fire showed her nose bright red as a clown’s. Ruth would no doubt have recommended green foundation. Flora jumped as she heard voices. Obviously guests were being hastily ejected.
Opening the heavy rust dralon curtains a fraction, she could see Alan and Lindy Cardew (very done up in diamonds and a new full-length mink), two other men she recognized as high-profile local councillors, two bankers from the RSO board and their wives and goodness, the Steel Elf, wrapping herself in a long blue velvet cloak, all going towards their cars.
Then she heard George apologizing for some cock-up in the kitchen.
‘See you in the Hoogry Hoonter in ten minutes.’
‘You’ll be lucky,’ snarled Flora.
Enticing smells of wine, herbs and scallops wafting from the kitchen, belying any cock-up, reminded her she hadn’t eaten all day. Feeling dizzy, she leant against the marble mantelpiece.
A week’s skiing, even if the mobile had gone up the mountain with him, had almost ironed out the bags under George’s eyes. His dark brown shiny face matched his leather sofas and armchairs. The black and white of his dinner jacket softened the rough, rocky features. White teeth chewing a cigar, big suntanned hand clamped round a glass of whisky, obviously trying to bluff it out, he looked almost genial as he shoved open the door: