Appassionata rc-5

by Jilly Cooper

  As a result Polaroid cameras sold out in Rutminster High Street. As an alternative, the event could be witnessed by telephoning Dixie who, since his success as Gwynneth in the Christmas concert, had taken to occasional cross dressing. Dixie would then barge into the room, disguised as a waitress, pretending to be delivering room service to the happy couple.

  Randy had taken a book on the winner. Viking was favourite, Blue 5–1, himself 8–1 and handsome Barry the Bass 10-1, right up to Cherub 50-1, Peter Plumpton and Simon Painshaw, who were both gay, 100-1, and El Creepo, Carmine Jones and Dirty Harry 1000-1. This had all to be kept secret from the women of the orchestra, who might sneak to Abby, and particularly from Flora and Julian, who would both violently disapprove.

  Most of the men would have liked to have a crack at Flora. They had originally backed off because they felt Viking had claimed droit de seigneur. But since The Creation Flora seemed to be putting out fewer signals than ever.

  Flora didn’t want to go on tour one bit. She loathed the idea of leaving Trevor, whom she kept finding shuddering under the clothes in her suitcase, and although she scuttled away like an embarrassed daddy-long-legs every time George appeared in the building, she hated the thought of not seeing him for ten days either.

  Blue had made no progress with Cathie Jones, but he knew she was in a bad way, because he’d seen her, grey as the fluffing willow herb, sitting down by the railway line which she always did when she was feeling suicidal. But good as his word at the gala, he had persuaded Knickers to take Cathie on tour as an extra.

  At first Cathie refused because her only black dress stank under the armpits, and Carmine refused her the money for a new one. Blue got round this by buying her a crushed velvet midi from Next. He then tore out the label and persuaded a friend who worked for the Oxfam shop in Rutminster to make out a fifty-pence bill to show Carmine.

  Carmine was furious, but he didn’t intend Cathie’s presence to cramp his style, he and El Creepo intended changing bedrooms several times.

  Viking liked going on tour. Being blond like Juno, he was always mobbed in Latin countries. Not trusting the barbers of Seville, he had his hair cut and streaked by Giuseppe of Parker’s the week before. Dropping in at the solarium afterwards, he found the entire brass section stretched out on sun beds.

  Returning in ‘disgosst’ to H.P. Hall, he was summoned to the top floor, where George, Miles, Digby, Quinton, his Third Horn, and an unhappy Julian awaited him. A very over-excited Miss Priddock was hovering in the doorway.

  George then told Viking that Old Cyril must go. He was drinking far too heavily, he couldn’t centre the notes any more, and last week during Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony he had fallen off the stage and carried on playing a different tune.

  ‘And on Saturday Cyril passed water on stage,’ said Miles with a shudder.

  ‘He did not,’ snapped Viking.

  ‘Ay saw the steam raysing,’ chipped in Miss Priddock.

  Viking looked at Cyril’s scarlet dahlias on George’s desk.

  ‘That steam was coming out of Blue’s ears, because Abby was wearing a silver flying suit,’ he said, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle.

  ‘He’s got to go,’ George said gently. ‘You can’t protect him for ever.’

  ‘Best before the tour,’ said Miles. ‘I’ll speak to him at once.’

  ‘We’re leaving on Monday,’ said Viking in outrage.

  ‘Well, he’s certainly not up to the Fourth Horn Solo in Beethoven’s Ninth — it goes on for pages,’ protested Quinton.

  ‘It’s really too high for Fourth Horn,’ said Julian reasonably. ‘Quinton had better play it.’

  ‘I’ll tell Cyril,’ said Viking icily, ‘and he can go at Christmas, give him time to adjosst.’ Then, looking round at their several dubious and disapproving faces, threatened, ‘If he goes before then, I go too.’

  Viking found Cyril at home, downing his second bottle of red of the day and looking at the delphinium catalogue. They had such beautiful names, Faustus, Pericles, Othello, which was dark crimson, and Cassius, a rich dark blue. He could order some Cassius, and watch them merging into the deepening blue dusk next summer, as he sat out in the garden, listening to his old records and getting through the odd bottle before tottering off to bed.

  He was delighted to see Viking, but surprised he wouldn’t have a drink. Viking did it so kindly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Cyril, we all adore you, but you’re not cutting it any more. You’re the best guy I’ve ever played with, I’ll still need your advice, so stay to the end of the year, and after that you must come and see us.’

  Cyril would have preferred to have gone straight away, but he needed the money.

  ‘What will you do?’ asked Viking

  ‘I expect I’ll go and live with my sister.’

  After Viking had left, Cyril tore up the catalogue — he couldn’t afford delphiniums now and there wouldn’t be room for them in his sister’s window-boxes.

  Mrs Rawlings who lived next door could have sworn she heard pitiful sobbing later in the evening, but Cyril was such a cheery soul, it must have been the wireless.

  Viking had gone out and got absolutely plastered.

  On the eve of the tour, over in the Close, a disconsolate Julian, watched Luisa pack for him. He loathed touring, he couldn’t bear being parted from his dear wife for even a night.

  ‘Poor old Cyril,’ he sighed, ‘I’m not sure it isn’t kinder to put musicians down than to retire them. The RSO is all the family he’s got.’

  Julian looked at the ‘Save the RSO’ sticker in the window — somehow he had to save his orchestra.

  Appassionata. FIFTH MOVEMENT

  FIFTY-SIX

  Finally on a cold grey morning at the beginning of October, the orchestra were waved off by a disconsolate troop of wives, girlfriends, a few martyred-looking husbands weighed down by baby slings, Brünnhilde Buckle towering over everyone and Marcus waving the paw of a swallowing Trevor.

  But just like Cosi Fan Tutte, the moment the buses were out of eyeshot, everyone swapped places particularly on Moulin Rouge and out came the drink and the fags.

  ‘I’ve got some freshly squeezed orange juice for you,’ said Hilary as she sat down beside Miles, who had just rolled up in an uncharacteristically smart off-white linen suit and an open-necked navy-blue shirt.

  ‘Doesn’t Miles look nice in stone?’ said Clare, as she collapsed beside Dixie.

  ‘Nicer still if he were turned to it.’

  ‘At least that colour won’t show up the scurf.’

  ‘We’re all going on a workaholiday,’ sang Flora to Viking as they sailed past Parker’s, displaying frightful autumn fashions, in burgundy, rust and snuff-brown.

  Out in the country, autumn was busy daubing the woods in orange and yellow. Rooks and gulls argued over newly ploughed fields. Behind veils of little cobwebs, the hedgerows blushed with berries. An ironic cheer went up as the buses approached Heathrow and were overtaken by a sleek black limo with Abby immersed in Beethoven’s Ninth in the back. Maestros usually travelled separately, going first class on plane and train and sometimes staying with the soloists in more expensive hotels than the orchestra, which would tax the ingenuity of Abby’s would-be seducers even further.

  ‘Our fright will last two hours,’ said Noriko consulting the schedule as they queued to check in.

  Totally ignoring Miles’s twenty-kilo limit, Clare rocked up with four suitcases and three tennis rackets weighing one hundred and twenty kilos, confidently expecting brawny Dixie to hump it all around for her. Being her first tour, she hadn’t appreciated that musicians never carry anyone else’s stuff, or that Dixie would be far too busy competing with the other men to carry Abby’s six suitcases of scores (Beethoven’s Ninth was larger than the Chinese telephone book) and clothes for each concert, plus a second change for dinner with the ambassador later.

  ‘Did you pack your suitcase yourself?’ the check-in girl asked Randy.

&nbs
p; ‘Of course.’

  ‘He did not,’ said Candy indignantly.

  Militant Moll went puce in the face when a customs man insisted she carried her vibrator in her hand luggage.

  ‘What’s wrong with Ninion?’ chorused the Celtic Mafia.

  Miss Parrott scuttled through the passport check; she didn’t want Dimitri or anyone else to discover her real age.

  Abby was touched when every man in the orchestra converged to lift her hand luggage into the lockers and sit next to her on the flight.

  Francis bought her a copy of the Independent, Old Henry, some glacier mints. Randy, who was intending to spend the two thousand on a new set of golf clubs, to Clare’s irritation, upstaged everyone by buying Abby some Amarige body lotion in duty free, and murmuring that he hoped he might have the privilege to rub it in during the next week.

  Poor Cathie Jones, always airsick, and green before take-off, was cringing at the back of the plane. Putting as much distance between her and himself as possible, Carmine shot up the front to ask Abby’s view on his solo in the trumpet fanfare in Rachel’s Requiem. Watching him, Blue slid in beside Cathie with a bag of barley sugars.

  ‘Talk to me, and you won’t have time to throw op.’

  Hilary and Juno were infuriated. Having bought Hello! and Tatler they found endless pictures of Clare and her father on 12 August.

  ‘I’ve always made shooting lunches for Daddy,’ explained Clare apologetically. ‘If I’d objected he’d have shot me as well.’

  ‘Isn’t that Dixie peering out of the bracken?’ hissed Juno.

  ‘No, it’s a herd of Daddy’s Highland cattle,’ said Clare airily, in all senses of the word, because they’d taken off.

  Even before the first drinks trolley started rumbling down the aisle, Miles was on his feet.

  ‘This is an important tour. Please remember you are an English,’ (loud boos) ‘I mean British,’ (more boos) ‘orchestra and behave like ambassadors for your country and exercise decorum on all occasions.’

  Exactly on cue, Randy and Candy emerged from the lavatory, straightening their clothes and Miles’s exhortation that they must rout out hooliganism was drowned in howls and catcalls.

  ‘An important tour,’ ploughed on Miles.

  ‘Particularly as we’re going to witness the return of L’Appassionata as a soloist,’ quavered Old Henry, who wanted the two thousand for a new bow, to loud cheers all round.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ wondered Flora, as different players queued up to ask Abby if, after the concert, she’d like a personally guided tour of the lovely old city of Seville, which, after all, had been the setting for Don Giovanni’s ill-fated scrap with the Commandatore.

  Meanwhile, beside Julian, Mary, eight months pregnant, was embroidering a sampler for the new baby.

  ‘D’you think she’s going to explode?’ whispered Cherub nervously to Noriko.

  ‘I have just seen a pig fly past the window,’ Viking muttered to Blue, as they waited for their luggage in Seville. ‘Carmine has just forked out a hundred pesetas for a trolley for Abby’s cases. This is going to be a fight to the death.’

  The Seville sky was the palest blue, as though it had been through the washing-machine a thousand times. As they chugged past ancient tawny houses, and streets lined with glossy green trees, Viking leant out of the bus and picked an orange. It was much hotter than Rutminster. This time everyone was housed in the same hotel. Before the rehearsal, Abby had a quick swim in the hotel pool. Every man in the RSO seemed to have the same idea, showing off with high dives and flashy crawls.

  Old Henry, dreaming of his new bow, dog-paddled eagerly around Abby. Carmine kept vanishing under the water, only deterred from groping her by Viking, who wouldn’t have dreamt of crinkling his hair by swimming before a concert, but who prowled round the edge of the pool keeping an eye on his quarry.

  At six o’clock there was a panic instead of a rehearsal, because the cherry-red RSO van hadn’t arrived with the instruments and all the music. The real heroes of the tour, Charlton Handsome and his humpers and roadies, had been driving from Rutminster since Saturday morning. They had been held up at the border, where Customs, assuming they were a rock band, upended the entire van for drugs.

  As the van finally drew up outside the Seville concert hall, frenzied musicians fell on it, terrified their precious instruments might have gone astray. Charlton was rolling the big bass drum down the ramp, when he was pushed aside by Dimitri, frantic to find his Guarnieri, vowing they’d never be parted again.

  ‘Just fuck off, Knickers,’ Charlton was now saying to an hysterical Nicholas, ‘or I’ll drive the ‘ole lot into the river.

  ‘Fanks, love,’ he added to Flora, who’d brought out a six-pack of iced beer.

  ‘I will not have drinking during working hours,’ spluttered Miles, rolling up in a dinner-jacket.

  ‘I’ll ’ave you remember, Mister Brian-Knowles,’ snapped back Charlton, ‘that while you was shacked up all cosy last night wiv Lady ‘Ilary, me and the boys,’ he pointed to an ice pick and shovel attached to the inside of the lorry, ‘was digging our way outa the Pyrenees.’

  Miles went purple, particularly when Flora burst out laughing.

  ‘What’s in that box?’ she asked, as Charlton relieved her of another can of beer.

  ‘Viola players — you get more in if you slice them thinly.’

  The concert was a massive success. John Lill, the soloist, played the Rachmaninov so beautifully he had the very formal, straight-backed audience yelling their dark sleek heads off.

  Abby was nervous how they’d react to Rachel’s Requiem, but they listened enraptured, and when Viking launched into ‘Rachel’s Lament’, they all started to clap as though he were Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun Dorma’, so Viking played it again, and the applause at the end went on for ten minutes.

  As the roadies loaded up again for the drive to Granada, Charlton told Julian he’d heard that ‘triffic tune’ twice on the bar radio during the concert. Francis the Good Loser, climbing up a lamp-post in the main square to get a better reception on the World Service, nearly got arrested later in the evening.

  ‘Listen,’ he thrust out his radio.

  ‘Ah, “Rachel’s Lament”, very good tune,’ chorused the ring of policemen, giving him a round of applause when he played it on his fiddle.

  As Abby came into the hotel around one o’clock after an official dinner with John Lill and the Mayor of Seville, the foyer was suddenly full of male musicians. Jerry and Quinton both wanted words about their solos in Beethoven’s Ninth, and individually wondered if they could run through them in Abby’s suite.

  ‘No, you fucking can’t,’ Viking was at Abby’s elbow, waving her key. ‘You pinched that solo from Cyril, Quinton, you bloody sort it out.’

  ‘What about a drink?’ he murmured to Abby, two minutes later as he opened her door.

  Abby havered, then said wistfully, ‘I ought to get an early night, and I’ve gotta practise the Mozart — it’s more difficult than I figured, I’m terrified of letting Rodney down.’

  Or yourself, thought Viking.

  He wasn’t going to push it. Instead he gave her the orange he’d picked from the bus, and made her promise to have dinner with him later in the week.

  On tours, as on away fixtures, the orchestra tended to split into two groups. Pond Life was epitomized by Peter Plumpton, Simon, Hilary, Militant Moll (and a reluctant Ninion), along with others who were either desperately broke or tight with money. This group, because breakfast was the only meal provided, came down, stuffed themselves, then loaded rolls, cheese, ham, yoghurt, apples, even cartons of decanted prunes into carrier bags, and lived off that for the rest of the day. This meant they could go home with enough totted-up lunch and dinner allowance to pay the gas bill or buy a microwave. They never went out boozing.

  In utter contrast, Moulin Rouge led by the Celtic Mafia were hell bent on whooping it up.

  ‘If you make breakfast,’ as Dixie w
as fond of saying, ‘you’re not regarded as one of the lads.’

  It would be hard to decide which group disapproved more strongly of the other. With the making of Abby on the agenda, however, the two groups became blurred with Ninion realizing he could buy an inferno of microwaves with the two thousand, and Francis appreciating he’d be able to pay for a hip operation for his wife, instead of waiting a year for one on the NHS. Peter Plumpton had already earmarked a button-backed sofa in an antique shop in Eldercombe.

  To add to the tension as the days passed, the schedule was absolutely punishing. Seville, Granada, Santiago, Corunna, in four days, with Madrid, Barcelona and Toledo to come, which meant rising at dawn to catch the coach to get to the airport or station followed by a long journey, no time to unpack before a rehearsal in a strange hall, with hardly any more time to change, tart up or snatch something to eat before the concert. After which it was natural to have a few drinks and let off steam. Staggering into bed around three o’clock in the morning, they all had to be up at crack of dawn to get on the coach to the next town the following day.

  The tour was an even worse nightmare for Miles and Nicholas, who not only had to keep Moulin Rouge in order, but also had to hand out and retrieve all the hotel-room keys at every stop, get suitcases into the right rooms, and drag musicians out of their beds into the coaches as alarm calls were increasingly ignored.

  No matter how many signs Knickers put up at each concert hall, the buggers still wandered round bleating: ‘Where’s the stage? Where’s the changing-room? Where’s the bog?’ which was odd when they never had any difficulty finding a pub or restaurant the instant the concert was over. There was a frightful row in Corunna because breakfast consisted only of croissants, coffee and orange juice. Pond Life, with nothing to live on for the rest of the day, nearly refused to get on the coach taking them to the station.

  Abby’s suitors got very excited in Santiago, when Viking started a rumour that she’d gone up the cathedral spire with Blue. Having panted to the top, with Old Henry and El Creepo nearly dying of heart attacks in the process, they found only Militant Moll bawling out Ninion, because she’d caught him peering into the women’s changing-room. With the coast clear, meanwhile, Viking had belted round to Abby’s hotel, only to find she’d gone out shopping.