by Jilly Cooper
‘Miles will cope, he’s very capable.’
‘He’s no good at zapping mergers. Can’t you wait till after the Appleton?’
‘Flora’s my noomber one priority, now,’ said George firmly. ‘I’m not going to let that slip through my fingers. Work ruined my last marriage. It’s only for three months.’
Abby felt the peacekeeping forces had left the orchestra. Even worse with Flora gone, she and Marcus were thrown into each other’s company. Abby felt increasingly bad about betraying him with Viking. How long would it be before one of those rogues in the orchestra tipped him off — probably in the middle of the Appleton.
When she finally got home, having made a detour via Lucerne for Rodney’s funeral, she couldn’t meet Marcus’s eyes and became even more aggressive through guilt.
‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling for days. Oh, there you are, baby,’ as a mewing Scriabin came running down the stairs, ‘I was so worried about you.’
‘Mrs Diggory’s been looking after them,’ stammered Marcus, ‘and George came and collected Trevor. Isn’t it amazing about him and Flora?’
‘Don’t change the subject. How could you push off and leave them?’ Abby looked lovingly down at Scriabin, who was now purring in her arms, sucking at her jersey like a baby.
‘My asthma got so bad,’ mumbled Marcus, ‘and the cats missed you and kept coming into the studio and Howie isn’t getting me any work so I flew over to Prague and tried to set up a cheap record deal.’
He didn’t add that Boris’s and Abby’s promises back in March of conducting and bankrolling him had never materialized.
‘Any luck?’ asked Abby.
‘I’m waiting to hear.’
Even Abby in her state of preoccupation noticed he looked awful, dreadfully thin and pale but with an unnatural hectic flush on his cheeks, and the rash of too many steroids speckling his mouth. By the time he’d carried her cases upstairs, he could hardly breathe and collapsed wheezing onto the bed.
‘How was the tour?’
‘So so, great houses, great performances, but Rodney died.’ Abby was angrily crashing coat-hangers along rails to make more room.
‘I know — I’m desperately sorry.’
‘Whatever for? You only met him once.’
‘I knew what he meant to you.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. I’m exhausted.’ Then, knowing she was being vile, added, ‘You look wiped out, too.’
‘I’ve been working on stuff for the Appleton.’
‘What have you chosen?’
‘A Bach prelude, Liszt’s B Minor Sonata, a little suite of Boris’s. Great that he’s gone to Number Ten in the Charts.’
‘Great that the orchestra’s gone to Number Ten,’ corrected Abby sharply, crashing pots and bottles down on her dressing-table.
‘What are you doing in the second round?’
‘Chopin Etudes, the Grande Polonaise, a couple of Debussy Preludes and the Waldstein.’
‘Not the Appassionata?’
Marcus blushed. ‘I made such a cock-up at Cotchester.’
That was what he’d decided to play today, but such was his panic and indecision, nothing sounded any good and he kept changing his mind. There was music all over the floor of his normally tidy studio.
Helen, who hadn’t recovered from Rannaldini disappearing with Flora after The Creation, hadn’t helped by ringing at all hours.
‘I thought she’d cheer up when she heard about Flora and George. But she seems curiously pissed off that Flora’s landed such an ace bloke. She’s already channelled her suspicions in another direction, some Czech pianist, called Natalia, who’s entered for the Appleton, and evidently Rannaldini’s seeing a lot of Hermione.’
‘Helen shouldn’t hassle you,’ fumed Abby, finding a genuine excuse for fury. ‘How can you concentrate when she’s on your back all the time?’
‘It’s OK. She’s got to dump somewhere.’
Abby was frantic for Marcus to make love to her, but when he almost shrank away, she manufactured a row, seized the nearest Barbour and stormed out for a walk.
There were lights on in The Bordello, but finding herself helplessly drawn towards them, she realized it was only the setting sun shining across the lake, turning both water and window-panes to gold. She had never physically ached for someone so much in her life as Viking.
By the time she had reached the end of the lake, the sun had deepened to blazing vermilion, its reflection now cooling its burning body in the lake. Oh God, if only it were as easy to extinguish desire.
Delving in the Barbour pocket for a tissue to wipe her eyes she found, amid the debris of leaves and wild flowers, a torn-up letter in Marcus’s handwriting. Piecing it together with trembling hands she read:
My darling, darling, darling A,
I am dying for you, I can’t go on. I never believed it was possible to miss anyone so much or so impossible to suppress my desperate, desperate longing.
Then there was a quote from Pushkin, ending: ‘What can my heart do but burn, it has no choice.’
How darling of Marcus to leave the poem in Russian, knowing she understood the language. Abby felt ashamed but happier. Two loves have I of comfort and despair, and she must concentrate on the love that comforted her.
Going into H.P. Hall after a sleepless night worrying how many of the musicians would know by now about her and Viking, she was cheered by a wonderfully funny piece of news.
On the notice-board next to details for the Appleton where tails and black dresses would be worn was an announcement that Sonny Parker’s Interruption had won a Gramophone Award for the best CD of contemporary music.
That would mean another hundred thousand pounds from Mother Parker.
Forgetting George was on sabbatical, Abby barged into his office for a giggle to find Miles heavily ensconced. George’s squashy leather sofas, his high-tech toys, his models of tower blocks and Regency façades, the fridge full of drink, the Edward Burra and the Keith Vaughan, all had been replaced by a functional oatmeal hessian sofa, a totally empty desk and some very uncomfortable chairs. The decorators had obviously been at work, slapping beige emulsion over the shredded ginger suede walls.
‘I thought George had only gone for three months,’ said Abby aghast.
‘Everything’s very much in the air at the moment,’ said Miles coolly. ‘Please don’t let that cat in and I’d prefer it if you knocked.’
‘Very minimalist,’ Abby looked round the room, then attempting a joke, because she suddenly felt so nervous, ‘to match Jessica’s minis.’
Miles ignored John Drummond’s piteous mewings.
‘Jessica’s left,’ he said curtly.
‘Whatever for? She really cheered us up with those typing errors.’
‘Important for morale,’ Miles smiled thinly, ‘for the orchestra to realize we’re prepared to make cuts on the admin side as well.’
‘But the sponsors just adored her.’
‘Actually she left of her own accord. She realized she would be expected, now George isn’t around, to do a little more than pour champagne and forget to hand in lottery tickets.
‘Far more interestingly,’ Miles cracked his knuckles joyfully, ‘Rannaldini has just been appointed musical director of the CCO,’ then, at Abby’s look of horror, continued, ‘He’ll still retain his directorships in New York, Berlin and Tokyo, of course.’
‘Then he won’t have time to look after the CCO,’ snapped Abby. ‘They’ll be short-changed like everyone else.’
‘Course they won’t. Don’t be so needlessly spiteful. The Arts Council are delighted,’ said Miles looking equally pleased, ‘and having someone of Sir Roberto’s calibre near by should put you all on your mettle.’
Miles certainly hadn’t purchased any kid gloves in Spain.
‘So Rannaldini’s now in a prime position to merge us and the CCO,’ blurted out Abby. Oh why couldn’t she keep her trap shut?
‘Rannaldini
’s a wonderful musician — ’ for a second Miles’s eyes contained a flicker of genuine warmth — ‘and a natural disciplinarian.’
‘Viking wouldn’t stand for that.’
‘Viking’s left us, too,’ said Miles silkily.
‘W-w-what?’ whispered Abby, bruising her spine as she collapsed onto one of the uncomfortable chairs. ‘Where? When? How?’
‘He resigned this morning.’
‘But why?’
‘To be quite honest, I think he’s bored. He’s been here eight years. Nothing to keep him. Should have gone to London years ago.’
‘But he’s the best player we’ve got and he’s under contract.’
‘We thought he was, too, and that we could hold him at least until after the Appleton, but when we checked, it ran out last month. There was nothing we could do.’
‘But all the contracts have been renewed.’
‘It seems they haven’t. George has been a shade lax.’
‘But this is awful. Viking lifted the orchestra with every note.’
As if in agreement, John Drummond’s black paw appeared supplicatingly under the door.
‘Viking is a dangerous influence,’ said Miles briskly. ‘Quinton is far less erratic, more responsible and can’t wait to sort out the section; Rannaldini agrees.’
‘What’s he got to do with it?’ hissed Abby.
‘When he did The Creation he thought Viking was very overrated. Big fish in a small polluted pond, to quote yourself, and didn’t he know it.’ Miles rose to his feet. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Abby, after your little tantrum in Toledo in front of the chairman and his wife, not to mention Nicholas and Hilly,’ his voice thickened lasciviously as he mentioned her name, ‘I thought you would be delighted he’s left us. Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ he said chillingly.
As he moved forward to open the door for her, Abby thought for a second he was going to stamp on Drummond’s twitching paw. Prufrock had become Robespierre overnight.
Outside she found Miss Priddock in tears.
‘Mr Hungerford loved cats, he’s left some money so I can go on buying Drummond a lottery ticket every week.’
Utterly stunned, Abby sought out the Celtic Mafia, who looked bleak and said Viking had flown back to Ireland. None of them would elaborate.
‘Didn’t he leave me any message?’ pleaded Abby.
‘He left you this,’ said Blue.
It was a cheque for two thousand pounds for the Cats’ Protection League.
Poor Abby had to go straight into rehearsal. They were playing The Fairy’s Kiss which had a fiendishly difficult horn solo. Quinton played it well enough, but there was no halo round the interpretation. The rest of the horn section looked suicidal. Even the prospect of his marriage to Jenny couldn’t raise Lincoln’s spirits. Cyril was wearing a black armband.
‘I reckon Viking was greater than Dennis Brain,’ he kept saying.
And now that George and Viking have gone, Miles will have you out by the end of the week, thought Abby.
Suddenly Noriko started crying and rushed off the stage. Cherub dropped his drumsticks and rushed off to comfort her. Abby felt the implicit blame of the entire orchestra. It was monstrously unfair. Viking had been in the wrong, he’d made the bet.
In the afternoon they rehearsed Mahler’s First Symphony, which had three trumpets playing off stage. Believing Carmine and Randy were deliberately bitching her up, coming in at the wrong moment and much too loud, Abby screamed at them to put socks in it. The next time the passage was so quiet, no-one could hear it. Abby was left flailing in space. Knickers discovered the trumpeters playing darts in the band room.
‘She insisted we play pianissimo, she can’t have heard us,’ protested Randy innocently.
So Abby made them do it again. And Randy played it from his car; everyone could hear him revving up and started to laugh.
Storming out to the car-park, Abby noticed Viking’s empty parking place had been taken by Quinton’s very clean Rover and burst into tears. Desolate, she drove home to find Marcus had lit a fire and left her some melon, chicken Kiev and a note saying he loved her.
Marcus is the one true thing in my life, Abby told herself numbly, I must cling on to him.
She was roused by the doorbell. Standing outside was a raddled but very sexy-looking blonde. Her name was Beatrice, she said, and she was a freelance who fed copy to most of the papers, particularly the music magazines.
‘I only talk to the media if it’s authorized by the RSO press office.’ Abby was about to slam the door.
‘I only wanted to give you this,’ Beatrice smiled winningly. ‘I was in Megagram’s press office and asked what was hot, and guess what they produced?’
A gust of wind seemed to blow her and a shower of leaves into the house. Abby gave a crow of delight as Beatrice handed her a galley of ‘Madly in Love’, the pop tune she and Marcus had recorded without Marcus knowing at the Christmas party. On the sleeve was a picture of Marcus looking wildly romantic at the piano, Abby had her arm round him, her cheek against his, her fiddle in her left hand.
‘I didn’t think Megagram were going to release it till January,’ squeaked Abby in excitment.
‘They’ve brought it forward and they’re very high on it. They want to cash in on the success of Rachel’s Requiem.’
‘How does it sound?’
‘Great,’ said Beatrice, ‘all the clapping and cheering in the background adds to the fun. He’s a fantastic pianist. You sound wonderful, too. Even better than you did in the old days.’ Then, very carefully, she added: ‘Is it true he’s Rupert Campbell-Black’s son?’
‘Oh Christ,’ Abby glanced at the sleeve. ‘Have they put in the “Campbell”? Marcus will go ballistic. He’s crazy to get to the top on his own.’
‘Sell more records,’ said Beatrice cosily, ‘better publicity for the orchestra, and for him.’
After they had played the single, which had colossal charm, Beatrice produced a bottle of champagne.
‘We must toast the new Richard Clayderman.’
‘I ought to give you a drink,’ said Abby.
‘I can put it on expenses.’
Oh why not, thought Abby, Marcus always shied away from publicity, but he wouldn’t be back for hours, and she would at last have a chance to push his career and the record. Unbeknownst to Howie she had made her share of the royalties over to the orchestra.
Nor did Beatrice know that the RSO had been chosen to accompany the finalists in the Appleton, and was so thrilled for Abby. She really was a delightful woman, despite her rather tarty looks, decided Abby, and it was such a relief to meet someone enthusiastic about success. The Brits were generally so carping.
‘D’you mind if I switch on my tape-recorder? I hate not getting the facts right?’ asked Beatrice.
After three-quarters of a bottle and no food all day, Abby forgot to emphasize what was off the record and what on.
‘This is the record that matters,’ said Beatrice, picking up the sleeve of ‘Madly in Love’. ‘I must say Marcus is almost as devasting as his famous father.’
‘More so,’ said Abby, clumsily trying to tug open a drawer in a nearby desk which had expanded because of the damp. Then it gave, and she pulled it out altogether, scattering photographs all over the floor.
‘My God,’ Beatrice dropped to her knees leafing through everything. ‘Pretty girl, who’s that?’
‘Flora Seymour, she shared the cottage with Marcus and me until last week.’
‘And my goodness, look at that.’ It was a topless Abby stretched out on the grass. Marcus, stripped to the waist, lay beside her, his head on her shoulder, his hand trailing across her ribs.
‘What a beautiful picture, pure Calvin Klein,’ Beatrice examined it in rapture.
‘Flora took it one afternoon. Great, isn’t it?’
‘Certainly is and he is gorgeous. What a profile and that gentle passionate mouth. No wonder he wows them on the platform. No wonder Megagram are thr
illed to bits.’
She emptied the rest of the champagne into Abby’s glass. ‘How does he get on with Rupert?’
‘When are you hoping to get married?’ Beatrice asked finally. She was now kneeling on the floor with her scarlet dress rucked up, and her thighs wide apart so you could see her black lace panties. Her blond bob fell over her hot brown eyes and she displayed a rift of cleavage where the three top buttons were undone.
Viking would have had her upstairs in five seconds flat, thought Abby in sudden anguish.
‘He only has to say, “Hi, sweetheart” in that peat-soft voice and he’s got them horizontal in the car-park.’ She could hear Hugo’s envious disgruntled voice as though it were only yesterday.
‘You OK?’ said Beatrice.
‘Fine,’ mumbled Abby. ‘Must go to the John. Fine,’ she repeated, cannoning off the doorway. Out in the garden she collapsed against an old apple tree, sobbing her heart out. When would she even see Viking again? By the time she’d splashed her face and wiped away the streaked mascara and pulled herself together, Beatrice had her coat on.
‘Mustn’t take up any more of your time. I’m such a fan, you’re so much prettier in the flesh and look so much younger! I hope to get up to the Appleton. Perhaps you and Marcus would have dinner with me. At least, can I have your autograph on my notebook?’
Abby didn’t tell Marcus about Beatrice’s visit. He had inherited Rupert’s pathological loathing of the Press, and she couldn’t remember which papers Beatrice had said she worked for, but the piece was bound to be friendly. She’d been so excited for Abby. Anyway Abby wanted to surprise Marcus with a lovely boost to his career.
SIXTY-THREE
Beatrice’s story broke in The Scorpion two days before the Appleton. CHIP OFF THE OLD BLACK said the headline.
The photograph taken by Flora had been blown up and cropped just above the waist so Abby and Marcus looked naked in each other’s arms. ‘L’Appassionata’s Madly in Love’, said the caption.
Abby was quoted as saying that she and Marcus were secretly engaged and planning to make the announcement after the Appleton, so people wouldn’t accuse Abby of favouring Marcus if her orchestra had to accompany him in the finals.