by Jilly Cooper
But it was a close-run thing. Marcus got an ecstatic reception, in part because he’d looked so vulnerable and terrified at the beginning and so handsome and touchingly amazed at the applause at the end. Most of the audience hadn’t a clue anything had gone wrong. But the orchestra had, and they cheered him to the leaking rooftops, rattling their bows, beating out a tantivy of approval on the shoulders of their cellos and basses.
Utterly distraught, Abby fled to her dressing-room refusing to return, so none of the soloists within the orchestra were raised to their feet for a special clap, which enraged Hilary.
‘Abby should have brought the wind up,’ she kept saying.
Marcus took five curtain calls and was just collapsing thankfully in his dressing-room when Noriko banged on the door.
‘Quick, quick, quick, Mr Brack,’ she cried enthusiastically, ‘come and pray again, the pubric are still crapping.’
Marcus was still laughing when he reached the middle of the stage and shook hands with a beaming Julian yet again.
‘You’ll have to give them an encore.’
‘But I haven’t practised anything.’
It would have seemed so presumptuous.
‘Just busk it,’ shouted Bill Thackery.
For a second, Marcus gazed at the ecstatic pink faces, their clapping hands growing pinker by the minute, luxuriating in the sound like waves rolling down the shingle. Then he sat down and played Schumann’s Dreaming, which had everyone in floods and elicited even louder roars of applause.
Meanwhile George had had a wearying two days justifying his volte-face over Abby’s contract to various enraged members of the board including Miles, Mrs Parker, Canon Airlie, not to mention Gwynneth and Gilbert. Aware he would receive even more flak after tonight’s near débâcle he went grimly into the conductor’s room to find Flora yelling at a sobbing Abby.
‘You’re just jealous because he’s got more talent than you, that’s what, and you can’t bear anyone to get ahead. After all Marcus has done for you. All that transcribing and simplifying and explaining those bloody great scores. Think of the times he’s lugged your clothes to the cleaners and cooked and cleaned up after you and fed your cats and polished your shoes and let you pinch his jerseys.’
‘You pinch his jerseys,’ wailed Abby,
‘I’ve known him longer, I’m allowed to. You wouldn’t have got a second foot on the rostrum without him, you stupid bitch, and you’re so fucking vain you had to jeopardize his big break conducting without a score.’
‘I know, I know.’
Alarmed he might not have a second half, George told Flora to pack it in and Abby to wash her face and pull herself together.
He then dragged Flora outside.
‘Nice to see someone else getting it in the neck,’ he said drily. ‘And that’s the “stupid bitch” you’re so determined to save.’
Flora blushed, then hastily changed the subject. ‘Didn’t Marcus play brilliantly?’
‘He had absolutely no choice,’ said George bleakly.
Somehow Abby managed to limp through Schubert’s Fourth Symphony.
Then, speaking to no-one, cutting the sponsor’s reception again, she hurtled home to a deserted Woodbine Cottage.
Flora had gone out boozing with Cherub, Noriko and Davie Buckle. Marcus had been swept out to dinner by George, Miles and a manic Helen.
FORTY-SEVEN
Sitting next to Marcus at dinner, George fired off endless questions about Abby’s, Flora’s and Marcus’s plans for the future, then insisted that his chauffeur, known as Harve the Heavy, took him back to Woodbine Cottage.
‘You’re not driving with all that drink inside you. It’s not as if we’ve had to fork out for your room at the Old Bell.’ Then, affectionately ruffling Marcus’s hair, said, ‘You did bluddy well, lad, we’d have been right in it if you hadn’t come to Abby’s rescue.’
Marcus fought an insane drunken urge to collapse into George’s arms. He was so strong and solid and he had the same brusque gentleness, the almost patriarchal kindness that Marcus missed so much since Malise’s death. He couldn’t imagine why Flora and, until recently Abby, kept slagging him off.
Perhaps George was in love with Helen, Marcus thought wistfully. From Jake Lovell onwards, men had been particularly kind to him for just that reason. Marcus hoped not. George had promised to look at the RSO calendar and try and find him another date.
Slumped happily in the front of the Rolls, Marcus gabbled most uncharacteristically to Harve that Piggy Parker had booked him for a soirée in June, playing tunes like ‘After Henry’ and ‘Lady be Good’. Marcus beat them out on the dashboard until Harve started singing along.
‘And Gwendolyn Chisledon wanted to know where Mr Hungerford was going to build his ghastly multiplex,’ went on Marcus. ‘When she heard it was on Cowslip Hill, she heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s all right, I thought it was our side of Rutminster.”’
Harve grinned.
‘And Howie Denston rang me on George’s mobile in the middle of dinner and wants me to get into bed with him.’ Marcus giggled. ‘I do hope he means financially not sexually.’
‘Either way, if I may say so,’ said Harve, in his gravedigger’s drawl, ‘you’re going to be screwed.’
It was a beautiful clear night. Although the great beeches along the lake glittered with frost, the moonlight was bright enough to pick out the first pale primroses nestling in their roots.
Singing and laughter was coming from The Bordello; Marcus wished he could have dropped in. One of his best moments of the concerto had been Viking’s little horn solo in the middle movement; he’d just liked to have talked the concerto through with someone.
As he stumbled out of the car, Orion, his favourite constellation, was free falling into the poplar copse at the top of the wild-flower meadow. Mars, a gold butterfly, was being chased by Leo the Lion. The outside lamp was still on, transforming the leafless clematis over the front door into a scrunch-dried blond; but the cottage was in darkness.
‘Thank you so much,’ said Marcus.
‘Pleasure sir, I am not a great lover of classical music but may I trouble you for your autograph. One day it will be something to show my grandchildren.’
‘Dum di-di dum di-di dum dum,’ sang Marcus.
His shadow was squat and black at his heels, reminiscent of one of Malise’s labradors. Had his stepfather from beyond the grave sent the dog to guard him on such a special evening?
Only after several fumbling attempts did he realize the door wasn’t locked.
‘I did it, I fucking did it.’ As he punched the air he nearly fell over Abby’s music case in the hall. Then he heard the sound of desperate sobbing and stumbled upstairs where, watched by two worried cats, Abby lay slumped on her four-poster. She was dressed in jeans and Marcus’s old black sweater with two holes in the elbows. She was utterly distraught to have let him down.
‘Flora’s right — I have always taken you for granted. I haven’t cleaned a pair of shoes since I moved in.’
‘But I l-like looking after you.’
Collapsing on the patchwork counterpane, he found himself stroking her hair, drenched with tears rather than sweat now, as thick and coarse as a pony’s mane. Outside he could see the lake gleaming silver and mysterious. Trailing his hand downwards, he patted her shuddering shoulders, which were hard and muscular from so many hours conducting. Her long legs reached to the bottom of the bed. She hadn’t bothered to shower after the concert and smelled disturbingly of dried sweat and Amarige. From their moonlit reflection in the long mirror opposite, they could have been two boys. Marcus took her in his arms.
‘Oh Christ, Abby, I’ve always loved you. From the moment you came loping up to the stage at the Academy.’
Her mouth tasted acid from fear, but as he kissed her he thought she would suck the tongue out of his mouth and was amazed by the leaping wolf-like passion of her response.
Apart from an ill-fated scuffle on the lawn w
ith Boris she had been celibate since the trauma of Christopher three years ago. She had Marcus’s clothes off him in a trice, ripping off several shirt buttons, nearly garrotting him with his tie and jamming his zip in the process. Like quick silver she was all over him, blowing in his ears, running her fingers through his hair, nuzzling his neck. Then she moved downwards, slowly kissing each bumpy rib, burying her face in his taut belly, exclaiming in wonder at the greyhound grace of his body.
There was only one drawback. Marcus couldn’t get it up. Even when his cock was sucked into the warm dark wet cavern of Abby’s throat, it remained as soft and as innocent as a lamb’s tail.
Marcus was even more contrite than Abby had been about the Rachmaninov. Abby, however, was surprisingly understanding.
‘It doesn’t matter, you’ve had a skinful, OK, and you’re pooped. You know what Luisa Pellafacini says: “Before a concert Julian won’t, after the concert he can’t.”’
‘I feel such a wimp.’
‘You can still make me come.’ Abby put his hand between her legs.
‘I’m seriously sorry,’ Marcus muttered into her shoulder, ‘but I don’t know which doorbell to press.’
Raising his head, prising his face round towards hers, Abby could see him blushing the same blood-red in the moonlight as his hair.
‘But I thought you and Flora — surely at school? The way she wanders into the studio half-naked.’
Marcus shook his head.
‘We snogged once or twice but we know each other too well and always started to laugh. Oh Abby, darling, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m a virgin.’
‘You gotta be joking, with a father like Rupert.’
‘That’s the trouble,’ Marcus rolled over and buried his face in the pillow. ‘Everyone expects me to be a great macho super-stud like Dad, and I just bottle out.’
Then stammering frantically, almost crying, he told her about the night of Basil Baddingham’s stag-party. ‘Edith was there. She drunk everyone under the table,’ and his disastrous encounter with the tart, and the near-fatal asthma attack.
‘Every time I try and make it with a girl I see contempt in Dad’s face.’
Holding his shuddering rigid body in her arms, Abby was overwhelmed with tenderness.
‘That’s enough to put anyone off sex,’ she said indignantly, ‘and on top of that it’s a knee-jerk reaction to think you’ll choke again. What a son of a bitch, what a damn fool insensitive preppy asshole.’
‘He wants an heir,’ said Marcus wearily.
‘Now listen to me, right.’ Abby pulled the duvet up tucking it round his shivering body. ‘For starters you’re the prettiest guy I ever saw, sure you are, and tonight you were the most shit-scared. I never saw stage-fright like that. I know what guts it took even to get onto the platform, OK? But in the end you showed everyone you’re made of steel. You were the superman, you saved us.
‘I love you, Marcus,’ her voice broke. ‘It’s just hit me like one of George’s bulldozers, and if we love each other we only need time. I’ll get you going, there are so many tricks.’
Marcus’s shivering became a quiver of pleasure as she ran her fingers lingeringly along the cleft between his buttocks.
‘All women,’ she went on half-mockingly, ‘want to marry a virgin so they can mould him exactly the way they want.’
‘Perhaps Barbara Cartland will make me the hero of one of her novels.’
‘You’re my hero anyway. George never stops nagging me to get involved in educational projects. Teaching you about sex is far more rewarding than relating Respighi’s Birds to the Blackmere Woods.’
As Marcus started to laugh, Abby took his hand, first moving it over her acorn-hard nipples, then burying it in her wiry dark pubic hair.
‘Under the fold you can feel a little nipple, that’s the clit, now lick your middle finger and stroke it, very gently, a mild pizzicato, right? Now slide a finger down and inside me in and out, deeper and deeper, testing for wetness, that’s lovely, now back to the clit again.’
It was rather like being taught fingering by his old music mistress, thought Marcus hazily. Any minute he expected Abby to tell him to use the long fingers for the black notes, and not to turn his whole hand, when he moved the thumb under.
‘Oh, wow,’ murmured Abby happily, ‘long fingers aren’t just good for tenths, I’m nearly there.’
He expected her to scream, shout and thrash about, and was alarmed he’d done something wrong when her body suddenly arched, stiffened, trembled violently all over and seemed to stop breathing.
‘Abby, are you OK?’
‘Heavenly.’ Her body slumped, but inside he could feel her melting and throbbing. ‘You’re a genius. You made me come.’
‘Truly — I thought it would be so noisy.’
‘When it’s real, it’s the quietest thing on earth. I love you.’
She fell asleep at once. Marcus lay awake stunned by the evening’s developments, reliving all the mistakes he’d made, particularly at the beginning of the Rachmaninov, luxuriating in the memory of the applause, and the kind things people had said. He hardly dared think how miraculously it would sort out his problems if he got it together with Abby.
I’m straight, I’m straight, he made a thumbs-up sign to his reflection in the mirror. All the same, like some lovely little restaurant you stumble on in the Dordogne when you’re pissed, he wondered if he’d ever be able to find the clitoris again. Perhaps Abby would let him bring a magnifying glass into lessons.
The next day, he had great difficulty keeping his newly straight face when he went back to H.P. Hall to collect his car, and was greeted by an overjoyed Noriko, waving a newspaper.
‘Mr Black, Mr Black.’ At last she’d got her ‘L’s’ right. ‘Have you seen your wonderful clit in Lutminster Echo?’
The Rutshire Butcher had reviewed the encore not the concerto, and written of ‘Marcus Black’s exquisite control and beauty of tone, unhindered by orchestra or conductor.’
FORTY-EIGHT
The next day Flora felt very flat after her sighting of Rannaldini, her rows with George and an inexplicable feeling of something going on between Abby and Marcus. She needed a male in her life.
Having bought an electric blanket she went off to the nearest NCDL kennels. The desperate barking, the pleading faces, the scrabbling paws saddened her immeasurably. Like the Anouilh heroine, how could she ever be happy while there was a single stray dog in the world? But in the end she chose the smallest, ugliest black-and-tan mongrel and called him Trevor. Trevor had been so bored in the kennels, he’d spent all day playing with his own shadow. Realizing his luck, he settled in immediately. Abby was livid when he treed both Scriabin and Sibelius, two chattering magpies up in the chestnut tree again, and then wolfed all their food.
‘He’ll be a partner in crime for that bloody Nugent.’
‘He’ll be a terrific guard dog,’ beamed Flora. ‘Lady Chisleden had a break-in while she was at the concert last night.’
Trevor was all of nine inches high and sulked dreadfully when Flora forgot to put on the electric blanket. Although he immediately found his way out through the cat door and went hunting, he howled if Flora left him behind, so she smuggled him into rehearsals and he guarded her coat and her viola case in the women’s changing-room.
George was not amused by the arrival of Trevor, particularly when he noisily chased John Drummond between two Perspex models on his first morning. Fortunately for Flora, George had been instantly distracted by devastating news: the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra blithely announcing they would be staging their own Opera Gala in the grounds of Cotchester Cathedral starring Rannaldini and Harefield. The main problem was they had picked the same Sunday in early May that the RSO were mounting their All-Star Centenary Gala.
This would wipe out the RSO’s audience. Georgie Maguire and an increasingly doubtful Dancer Maitland singing Rodgers and Hammerstein could hardly compete with the rerun of the most successful cl
assical record of all time.
George made out he was furious. Flora, who still had the print-outs under her mattress, suspected he had tipped Rannaldini off about the date of the gala, in order to run the RSO into the ground. The Arts Council, increasingly dismayed by the popularizing of the RSO repertoire, were muttering openly about closing down one orchestra.
At the beginning of March, El Creepo and Simon Painshaw came to the end of their two-year term as orchestral members of the board. Few players were interested in replacing them, as hatred of the management had reached an all-time high. In the end Hilary and Bill Thackery put themselves forward. Hilary, the orchestra decided, wanted the chance to exchange meaningful glances with Miles. She was a dangerous bitch but Bill would balance her out. Bill was such a nice guy and he’d behaved so well over the re-recording in January of Rachel’s Requiem and Julian repossessing his violin solo, that everyone felt he deserved to be on the board. Bill would see them right.
Meanwhile as a thank you and twenty-second birthday present, Abby took Marcus to Covent Garden, where the Cossak-Russe, the most dazzling ballet company in the world, were dancing Le Corsair. Tickets had sold out months ago and more touts were hanging round the opera house than pigeons. But the principal soloist, the great Alexei Nemerovsky, known in the Press as ‘The Treat from Moscow’ was both an old friend of Boris’s and a long-time collector of Abby’s records and had sent her two tickets.
It was heaven to escape from the RSO and all its problems for an evening, thought Abby, as she and Marcus wandered hand in hand through the packed foyer. Marcus had retrieved her orange satin trouser suit from the waste-paper basket and persuaded her to wear it. She was gratified how many people recognized her and nudged their companions, but she noticed the eyes of both sexes then swivelled to Marcus and stayed there in admiration.