by Jilly Cooper
SIXTY-EIGHT
The Press swarming round the hospital were thrown into a frenzy by Rupert’s totally unexpected arrival, particularly when he screeched to a halt in a muddy puddle, drenching the lot of them.
‘What’s the latest, Rupe? Is the kid going to be OK? Terrible shock for you,’ they closed round him. ‘How’d you feel about him being a woofter?’
Wrath gave Rupert superhuman strength as he barged a gangway through for himself and Taggie. He had more trouble fighting his way through the barricade of outraged medics. Helen had left tearful instructions that if, in the unlikely event Rupert rolled up, he mustn’t be allowed to see his son.
‘It’s the one thing that really triggers off Marcus’s asthma. Rupert’s got a terrible temper. I’ll only be gone a couple of hours.’
‘He’s not allowed visitors, he must be kept quiet. I’m afraid no-one can see him.’ The pleas, and then orders, fell on deaf ears as Rupert stalked through the lot of them.
He loathed hospitals, the smell and glaring whiteness instantly brought back poor little Xav’s countless operations and Taggie nearly dying twice when she miscarried. It also took him back twenty-two years to Helen also nearly dying, giving birth to Marcus — a sickly, carroty-haired baby, who, from the start, had never endeared himself to Rupert.
Finding the lift blocked by a massive matron, Rupert dodged round her and ran up the stairs with Taggie panting after him.
Three doctors, pretty Sister Rose and two male nurses barred the door to Room Twenty-Five.
‘I really must insist you don’t go in there.’
‘Fuck off.’ Once more Rupert parted them — a bowling ball through skittles — then he turned on a panting Taggie.
‘Stay outside, I want to see him on my own.’
‘I’d like to be with you,’ pleaded Taggie.
‘This is my problem,’ snarled Rupert.
‘That is the handsomest Angel of Death I’ve ever seen,’ sighed Sister Rose.
Expecting to find Marcus unconscious and a mass of tubes, Rupert was astounded to see him sitting on the bed buttoning up a blue dress-shirt. His red hair hung lank and darkened by sweat to the colour of a copper beach. His deathly pallor was tinged green by the fluorescent lighting, his huge frightened eyes were black caves as though he could see deep into his own tortured soul.
‘D-d-dad, I thought you were at the Pardubika,’ Marcus leapt to his feet, cringing against hideous yellow-and-orange curtains, waiting for the firing-squad invective.
For a second Rupert gazed at him, reminded of the only time he’d gone stag hunting. Appalled by the terrified eyes of a little doe trapped against a huge wall, he had been too late to call hounds off before they ripped her to pieces.
‘I’m really, really sorry,’ gasped Marcus.
Rupert shrugged. ‘It’s the way you’re made. Campbell-Black libido has to come out somewhere, I guess. Sorry I haven’t been any help. Been meaning to ring you for months — ever since you sent Tag that Mothering Sunday card.’
‘That was just after I’d met… I wanted to see you. Oh Dad,’ for a minute, Marcus’s lip trembled, then he stumbled forward and, for a brief moment, he and Rupert embraced.
Passionately relieved the boy was all right, Rupert patted his desperately bony shoulder.
‘You poor little sod.’ Then as Marcus half-laughed, added ‘Oh God, that wasn’t very tactful. Get back into bed.’
Marcus shook his head. ‘I’m going to play.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
But Marcus stood his ground. ‘You won a gold with a trapped nerve. If I don’t crack it now, I never will. It’s the only way to throw off the stigma of being Abby’s walker, Alexei’s catamite and Rannaldini’s stepson.’
‘And my son, too,’ said Rupert wryly. ‘Look, there’ll be other competitions. It’s crazy to risk it, when you’ve just pulled through.’
‘That’s why I pulled through. Would you terribly mind ringing the town hall? I don’t think they will let me use the telephone here. Just tell them I want to go on, and I’ll be there in half an hour.’
Finding it difficult to breathe and talk, he slumped onto the bed.
‘Benny’ll just be starting the second movement,’ he smiled slightly and cupped his hand round his ear, ‘I can hear him now. My tail-coat needs a press and a brush, but someone can do that at the other end. And could you get me a taxi, because I don’t think the hospital would do that for me either.’
‘I’ll take you if you’re really set on it.’
Marcus nodded, unable to speak, overwhelmed by Rupert’s totally unexpected acceptance. Then he muttered: ‘You’ve missed the Pardubika, I’m terribly sorry.’
‘Blood is thicker than water jumps,’ said Rupert, getting out his mobile.
All hell broke out as the doctors frantically tried to dissuade Marcus.
‘It’s insanity,’ they berated Rupert. ‘The pressure could kill him. He’s desperately weak and he needs to go on the nebulizer again in two hours’ time.’
‘Sometimes the mind reaches out and the body follows.’
‘You’ve pushed him into it.’
‘He has not,’ protested Marcus, unearthing the score of the Schumann from the bedside cupboard, and swaying at the sudden rush of blood to his head as he stood up. ‘Someone’s got to fight Abby’s corner. She should never’ve been fired.’
‘You realize we’re not responsible if he insists on discharging himself,’ boomed Matron, blocking the entire doorway.
‘The discharge of the heavy brigade,’ said Rupert, bodily removing her from Marcus’s path.
Taggie was hovering in the waiting-room on the way to the lifts with an undrunk cup of tea in her hands. Her eyes were very red. Marcus went straight into her arms.
‘It’s so lovely to see you,’ they cried.
Rupert put his arms round both of them, but just for a second. ‘Come on, we mustn’t be late.’
The only concession the hospital made was to smuggle them out of a side-door.
Panic gripped Marcus the moment he was installed in the back of the car. As they hurtled through the night, rain lashing and clawing at the windscreen, he took great gulps from his puffer and under a pallid overhead light, desperately riffled through the score which seemed terrifyingly unfamiliar. What were all the pitfalls? He hadn’t touched a piano for two days. With Abby, the orchestra would have seemed familiar, but Rannaldini would take everything much slower or much faster, whipping the orchestra up to an unnatural frenzy. Rannaldini also despised Schumann as an over-romantic wimp.
Thank God neither Rupert nor Taggie talked, although Marcus noticed his father’s hand sliding over Taggie’s whenever he entered a straight piece of road. As they reached the outskirts of Appleton, the reflections of the orange street-lights shivered like carp on the shiny black cobbled streets. Breathing in the conflicting wafts of hamburgers, curry and fish and chips, Marcus retched. Rupert’s mobile rang. It was Northern Television.
‘Howyer doing? Can you make it by eight-thirty, then Marcus can warm up during the interval. Everyone’s knocked out he’s coming on.’
Most of the space round the hall had been taken up by the seven OB vans and the cherry-red RSO lorry, but Rupert got them as near the artists’ entrance as possible. The only other stumbling-block was a river of damp press who immediately turned into a frenzied whirlpool.
‘Christ, it’s Rupert,’ shouted the Daily Express. ‘Looks as though he’s made it up with the lad.’
‘Dangerous bugger,’ warned the Mail, ‘watch out.’
‘Spect Rupert forced him to go on,’ said the Mirror. ‘What d’you feel about your son’s affaire with Nemerovsky, Rupert?’
Rupert looked the reporter up and down, about to tell him to get stuffed, then he changed his mind.
‘Shows Nemerovsky’s got extremely good taste.’
‘You don’t mind having a gay son?’ asked the Sun in amazement.
Briefly, Rupert put an a
rm round Marcus’s shoulders, the rain falling through the rays of the street-lamps, casting a speckled light on his haughty expressionless face.
‘I’ve got a son with enough guts to discharge himself from hospital and face the toughest ordeal of his life,’ he drawled. ‘I’m very proud of him. His sexual preferences, as long as they bring him happiness, are quite immaterial.’
‘What about his engagement to Abby?’
‘Much better they both found out before they got married.’
‘Do you know where Abby is?’
‘No.’
‘Nemerovsky’s got a terrible track-record, aren’t you worried about AIDS?’ asked an evil-looking blonde.
Rupert’s face suddenly betrayed such hatred everyone shrank back.
‘If he’d slept with you, Beattie,’ he said icily, ‘I’d worry about something much worse than AIDS.’
The surrounding journalists laughed nervously.
‘Are you disappointed about the Czech Grand National?’ asked The Times.
Rupert stopped in his tracks — incredible that he’d forgotten all about it in his race from the hospital.
‘It’s a Snip won, not Penscombe Pride,’ said the Telegraph, ‘Lysander broke a shoulder, Pridie fell at the last fence.’
For a second, Rupert’s face clenched in horror, then he said lightly, ‘But Marcus won’t,’ and they were through the swing-doors.
‘I said he was a dangerous bugger,’ grumbled the Mail, trying to make his biro work on a rain-sodden page.
‘It’s his son who’s the bugger,’ hissed BeattieJohnson.
‘Awfully good of you to show up, Martin,’ said an earnest woman in a billowing grey jersey. Brandishing a clipboard as she scuttled up to them on spindly red-stockinged legs, she looked like a turkey.
‘I’m Chrissie,’ she shook Marcus’s hand. ‘Our presenter, James Vereker’s going to announce you’re participating, just before Natalia Philipova goes on. Means the competition’s wide open. Do you need anything ironed? I expect you’d like to see your dressing-room before you warm up, Martin, and then go to make-up, but if James Vereker could have a brief chat first-’
‘James can have it afterwards. Martin needs to distance himself,’ said Rupert firmly, as he relieved her of the dressing-room key. ‘Come on, Martin.’
Marcus’s laughter almost turned to tears as he saw the ‘Save the RSO’ sticker on his door and the hundreds of cards and great banks of flowers waiting for him inside.
‘We were going to send them over to the hospital when we had a mo,’ said Chrissie apologetically.
Marcus suppressed a flare of hope that one might be from Alexei. But there was no time to look.
‘Could you bear to open them?’ he asked Taggie.
As he was pouring with sweat, he tugged off his jersey, then turning to Rupert, said, ‘I don’t mean to be horrible, but could you possibly keep Mum away while I warm up?’
Tripping over cables, climbing round petulant rank-and-file fiddle players, James Vereker, the presenter, reached the rostrum. Having smoothed his streaked blond hair and straightened his peacock-blue tie which exactly matched his eyes, he said he was so very, very pleased to announce that the British contestant, Marcus Campbell-Black, would be taking up his place in the final, after all. Over a burst of applause, he shouted that Marcus would be appearing after a further ten-minute interval, which would take place after Natalia Philipova’s concerto. The jury would then try to reach a decision during the Ten o’clock News, and the scheduled programme on the male menopause of Daniel Deronda would be postponed to a later date.
Like petrol-ignited flames, excitement crackled around the hall. Cherub dropped a cymbal in his excitement, the orchestra gave a great cheer, only half-induced by the fact that this would push them into overtime. Journalists were fighting to use the telephones with members of the audience, frantic to reorganize restaurant bookings and pick-up times, and to check on last buses and trains. The atmosphere had become electric. People were hardly back in their seats when a thunder of applause greeted the arrival of Rannaldini and Natalia on the platform.
With a black-tie audience, an orchestra in their tails and black dresses tend to look less distinctive and blend into one black whole. Nothing therefore could have stood out better than Natalia’s poinsettia-red taffeta dress, which emphasized her small waist, her lovely white arms and shoulders, and her shining dark curls. Showing off her glorious cleavage, she proceeded to bow several times to the judges in the gallery and the jam-packed audience, who were now well oiled by drinks in the interval. Benny had impressed but not entirely captivated.
‘Bet Rannaldini paid an arm and a legover for that dress,’ muttered Dixie.
Marcus and Helen had not been the only people to clock Rannaldini’s preference.
It was plain from the start that the NTV cameras were more besotted with Natalia even than Rannaldini. As she delivered Rachmaninov’s Third with an explosion of romantic passion, the cameras hardly left her beautiful face, whether she was smiling seraphically or whether her big scarlet mouth was drooping and her eyes closing in anguish during the sad bits.
Swinging round fondly, Rannaldini followed her every note, making sure phrases flowed into each other, slowing down if she looked like falling over herself, quietening the orchestra if there was any danger of her being drowned.
‘The brass section have at last learnt the meaning of the word pianissimo,’ whispered Flora in George’s ear. ‘Don’t you absolutely loathe, loathe, loathe Rannaldini.’
George took her hand. His jealousy instantly doused. He had been thinking how satanically handsome the bastard looked, as his hands languorously cupped and stroked the air, and wondering how Flora could possibly not still carry a torch for him. Gazing at her furious freckled profile only slightly softened by red tendrils still damp from the shower, George marvelled yet again that his love seemed to double by the second.
‘And he’s making it so bloody easy for that little tart,’ hissed Flora. ‘We can’t let him take over the RSO.’
‘Be Kwy-et,’ whispered Peggy Parker furiously.
Resplendent in puce velvet to match her face, she was sitting beyond George. She turned even pucer when she saw Trevor’s little furry face emerging from Flora’s dark blue shirt to lick his mistress on the chin.
Mrs Parker, was however, feeling considerable disquiet. Particularly as Natalia reached the end of the second movement, and the cameras panned lovingly on to the snow-white handkerchief with which she wiped both the damp keys and her sweating fingers.
‘More like the Rannaldini and Natalia Show,’ chuntered Lord Leatherhead, who was furious with Miles for cancelling the RSO bottled-water account. ‘When are we going to see some shots of the orchestra?’
‘I agree,’ hissed Mrs Parker, ‘Clare and Candy, Nellie and Juno, Noriko and Hilly are just as pretty as that Czech.’
‘And Cherub’s much prettier than Rannaldini,’ volunteered Flora.
‘Think that chap may be too overbearing for the RSO,’ muttered Lord Leatherhead.
In the row behind them, Gwynneth, who was reviewing the competition for the Guardian, and Gilbert, for the Independent, were busily scribbling. The last time they had heard Rach Three was in Rutminster, when only Marcus’s tenacity and presence of mind had saved Abby and the RSO from total calamity. How different it was tonight!
‘Not since Toscanini,’ wrote Gwynneth, who had a mega-crush on Rannaldini.
‘Not since Eileen Joyce,’ wrote Gilbert, who had his opera-glasses trained on Natalia’s bosom.
They both felt a huge satisfaction that they had been so instrumental in effecting the merger. There would be no more bum surprises on Moulin Rouge.
Canon Airlie, who should have sat next to Gilbert, had flu, so Miles had bagged his seat. Wearing a new DJ specially run up by Rannaldini’s tailors, Miles craned round the piano to gaze at Hilly. She looked so lovely in her new diamond brooch, another present from Rannaldini. He was glad Marcus
was playing the Schumann, which had a wonderful clarinet solo.
The last movement of the Rachmaninov was a triumph. It seemed impossible that Natalia’s little hands could possibly cover all the notes. Playing with hardly a pause, probing the depths of hell in the bass, shaking out shoals of silver coins in the treble, she galloped to a triumphant finale which was followed by an even more triumphant burst of applause.
Rannaldini, looking like a cat who’d swallowed the Canary Isles, made sure she got even more call-backs than Anatole. He was not pleased, hurrying her back for a fourth time, when the applause had almost petered out, to go slap into Julian bringing the orchestra off the stage.
The bars were crowded out, but the consensus was that not even the stormy splendour of yesterday’s Russian nor the American who’d played Mozart so heart-warmingly could possibly beat Natalia.
Charlton Handsome and NTV technicians were now reassembling the stage and readjusting microphones for the smaller orchestra needed for the Schumann. Carmine Jones, who wanted to know if he’d won the lottery, was livid not to get Cathie on his mobile.
Marcus had been buoyed up by the sudden miraculous rapprochement with Rupert. But alone with the upright piano in the practice room, he was overwhelmed with the impossibility of his task. His fingers were rigid and inflexible, yet slipping all over the keys. Even though Rupert had made him put his jersey back on again, he couldn’t stop shaking, his body encased in icy sweat. Even worse he was having increasing trouble breathing. He looked at the plaster on the back of his hand where the drip had gone in. How terrible if he had held up the competition for forty minutes only to have a memory lapse, or even worse another asthma attack and let everyone down. The piece seemed hideously unfamiliar and on stage he would have no score to help him. He must relax, make his mind blank, take slow, deep breaths. Sometimes the mind can take the body into impossible terrain. Wasn’t that what Rupert had promised?
The storm of hurrahs and bravos for Natalia’s obviously sensational performance had long since died away. He’d be on soon.
‘Our Father,’ began Marcus, ‘Which art in heaven. What came next? Unable to remember, he started to panic.’Which art in heaven, forgive us our trespasses… Oh Alexei, Alexei.’